A Parent’s Guide to Emergency Dental Care

Posted on: 25 May 2022

Many dental problems have an obvious cause and effect, or an action and reaction relationship. For example, tooth sensitivity can be your reaction to something like tooth decay, indicating that your decay has progressed to the point that the tooth's nerve has become inflamed. With some dental problems, you're limited to the reaction, or the effect, with the cause often being a mystery. It's natural to be confused and a bit concerned when the prosthetic tooth attached to your dental implant feels loose. Clearly, this isn't correct. But there's no pain or swelling around the implant, and it still appears to be perfectly intact within healthy tissues. So what could be wrong with your implant?

Lack of Pain and Swelling

Fortunately, the absence of any pain or swelling in the gums around the base of the prosthetic tooth suggests that you're not experiencing an infection. This certainly simplifies things. But, as far as you can tell, the implant in your jaw is intact, and the prosthetic tooth is undamaged—it's just noticeably loose. So where is the problem—in the prosthetic tooth, or in your actual dental implant?

Your Implant's Abutment

By the process of elimination, the issue could be with your abutment. This is the hidden part of an implant (it's invisible once the prosthetic tooth has been fitted) and it looks like a small metallic disc that acts as a connector—securing the implant in your jaw to the prosthetic tooth. Abutments are typically made of the same material as the implant, which is titanium alloy. It's a favored material because of its strength and biocompatibility, meaning that this metal is unlikely to trigger an adverse reaction in the host. Your problem could be as simple as the abutment being slightly loose.

Re-Securing Your Abutment

Abutments are either bonded into place using dental cement, or function as a type of latch screw, where the prosthetic tooth is screwed into the implant. Solving your problem might be as straightforward as re-securing the abutment. The prosthetic tooth will be removed and inspected. Sometimes a cemented tooth must be replaced, if the issue has caused the tooth to experience excessive or unnatural pressure, damaging the prosthetic tooth. If the tooth is undamaged, it will be re-cemented. Prosthetic teeth attached to an implant via a latch screw abutment may just need to have the latch screw tightened. 

Obviously, if an implant's prosthetic tooth is loose, then the overall implant is unable to function correctly. Fortunately, this is often just an easily-solved issue with the implant's abutment.

For more information about dental implants, contact a dentist in your area.