Many people associate the dentist with drilling. It is true that it is often a vital part of dental treatments, as it is used to create the right circumstances for healing procedures. It is often viewed as a noisy unpleasant process, but a necessary one.
If you are having dental implants, drilling will form part of the procedure. If this concerns you at all then it might be helpful to get more information about what is going on and why it is necessary to help you get started.
Why drilling?
In order to put dental implants into your jawbone, a dentist like the ones at Simply Teeth in Essex, will need to drill holes for them to slot into. Once healing takes place, these holes close up around the implants to secure them.
What precautions does the dentist take?
In order to make the process comfortable for you, your dentist will do any drilling under anaesthetic. This means you should not feel any discomfort.
If you drill directly into a material like the jawbone with something that is too big, it can cause the surrounding material to crack. In order to mitigate the chances of this happening and to gently open up the way for the implants, the dentist may start with a small drill. This makes an initial hole and then a slightly bigger one is used to widen it. This may be repeated if a bigger hole is required. The larger the implant, the more surface area there is to distribute the forces of chewing over so they will want to insert an implant that is as large as the jawbone can comfortably support.
The dentist will also drill quite slowly. Too fast and the friction of the drill bit begins to build heat which can damage the surrounding cells. They will also constantly flush the area with cool water to prevent this.
What if drilling freaks me out?
For some people, a little nervousness around drilling can turn into outright anxiety or even phobia. If that is you, then talk to your dentist about it rather than let it stand in the way of you having a treatment that you really want. They may be able to offer you the option of a general anaesthetic so you are unconscious or perhaps a lesser sedation method alongside a local anaesthetic so that you are awake but unaware.
