Mini Dental Implant to the rescue -

A patient of mine who is a school teacher was all stressed out one afternoon because she was afraid a front tooth was going to fall out right in front of her students in her classroom. She had a baby tooth that did not fall off in childhood. That was because the permanent tooth underneath that baby tooth was congenitally missing. As the permant teeth around the baby tooth grew in, the baby tooth looked shorter and smaller and was very noticeable. Finally, it got so loose that our schoolteacher was afraid the tooth could fall out in front of all her students while she was taking a class!

After some xrays and photographs, I extracted the baby tooth, inserted a mini dental implant (from 3M IMTEC) in its place and built up a tooth on it using tooth colored bonding material. Voila! In 45 minutes I had rescued her from what could have been a disaster. After a few weeks I proceeded to place a permanent crown on the mini dental implant.

Just for the record, I have placed mini dental implants in the upper jaw and built up a tooth on them using bonding material (composite resin) and sometimes the patients are so happy with this they decide not to proceed with the permanent crown. The oldest such buildups on mini dental implants have been in daily use and function since early 2005.

I have more information and photos at http://www.newtownfamilydentistry.com/ or http://www.pearldentalpa/.