Dental implants: The importance of hygiene

Oral implant is a solution that more and more often is winning patients and dentists over. The possibility of replacing one or more missing teeth without having to file the healthy adjacent ones often allows one to overcome his fear of a surgical intervention.

In truth we are speaking about a small intervention, that can be compared to a simple tooth extraction. The control of the operating room sterility however is much more important:

as a matter of fact, it is not only important to avoid a patient from becoming infected from pathogen agents, such as virus or bacteria, but to operate in an area as sterile as possible. The surgeon, the nurse, the medical assistant must wear sterile jackets and gloves. The operating room must have the lowest amount of bacterial load as is possible. The area that is to be operated upon must be protected by sterile covers according to the most important surgical rules. All of this lowers the risk that bacteria will invade the bone site where the implant is to be placed.

As facts show, even a small infection can disturb the otseointegration process, which is that natural phenomenon similar to a scar process that firmly joins the new root to the bone. Reacting to the bacterial aggression, the organism modifies the bone tissue both in terms of the type of cells present and of the mineralisation degree.

A small simple intervention, that requires great surgical attention, a lot of experience and an implacable  control of the operating room's sterility.

last update: 21 January 2008