After the initial healing period, your dental implant should be comfortable. At Rice Dentistry in Irvine, California, we believe you should pretty much forget it’s there most of the time (except, hopefully, when it comes time to clean it). If your dental implant is hurting, it’s not a good sign, and it demands attention.

Gum Disease and Dental Implant Pain

Dental implants aren’t like normal teeth because they don’t have nerves inside the tooth. The implant itself is completely incapable of experiencing pain, so that means that pain associated with a dental implant must be coming from somewhere else.

Most often, the dental implant pain comes from the gums and bone around the dental implant. At Rice Dentistry in Irvine, we often see that a dental implant infection, peri-implantitis, is the most common cause of pain around a dental implant. This is when bacteria have begun to invade the bone around the dental implant. Sometimes this is related to problems with the dental implant procedure, such as excess cement from the abutment. Other times it is related to poor oral hygiene. But many times, there’s no traceable cause of this type of infection.

This can be treated with antibiotics as well as removal of any contaminated material.

Biting Bad

If the dental implant doesn’t fit in properly with your bite, it can also cause pain in the bone around your dental implant. When you bite down, excess force on your dental implant causes it to push down into the bone, which causes discomfort. This discomfort occurs during or after chewing.

Often this type of dental implant pain can be treated by changing the dental crown atop the implant. Replacing it with one that fits better into your bite will resolve your discomfort.

Neighboring Teeth

Other times, a dental implant can be uncomfortable because it hasn’t been placed properly, and it’s interfering with neighboring teeth. When properly placed, dental implants help your other teeth, but in this situation, it may have damaged its neighbor. This may mean that the tooth has to be removed.

Choose Rice Dentistry for Your Dental Implants

Dental implant pain is rare, especially if you choose your implant dentist with care. To learn what sets our Irvine implant dentists apart at Rice Dentistry apart, contact Rice Dentistry at (949) 551-5902 or use our online contact form to schedule an appointment.