Dental Implants After-Care Guide: Excel Dental Care
After losing your natural teeth and deciding on the gold standard replacement option, dental implants, you must ensure proper care of your dental hygiene to ensure the success of the treatment. The provider of the dental implants near you is comprehensive instructions on caring for your mouth after implant surgery. If you want to learn more about after-care of dental implants, we suggest you continue learning from this article.
General Instructions
After getting dental implants in Ellicott City, MD, placed into your jawbone, you receive post-operative instructions to prevent inflammation or infections and keep the blood clot in place. During the initial 48 hours after dental implant placement, the provider suggests not to rinse your mouth vigorously because it can dislodge the blood clot. For similar reasons, you receive instructions not to drink with a straw, disturb the implant site with your tongue or finger and refrain from smoking or drinking alcohol.
Bleeding and Swelling
Bleeding and swelling after dental implant surgery is expected and are not a reason to visit the emergency dentist near you seeking treatments. However, you can try the following techniques to minimize bleeding after implant placement surgery.
Biting on moist gauze for an hour after the surgical procedure is helpful. Replace with fresh gauze after every 20 minutes if required. Do not consider lying down flat on your bed; instead, use extra pillows to keep your head elevated. Limit physical activities for at least 72 hours after surgery.
Swelling on your cheeks is expected from the day after your procedure and remains with you for at least three to four days before subsiding. However, when you use ice packs on your cheeks, leave them on intermittently for 15 minutes each to prevent tissue damage.
Pain after the Surgical Procedure
You receive a prescription for painkillers to relieve discomfort after the surgery. It helps if you start taking the medicines as you notice the anesthesia wearing off. You can take the medications as required to relieve pain but must ensure you don’t operate vehicles and machinery because they might leave you in an exhausted condition.
Antibiotics
You will likely receive a prescription for antibiotics that you must take as recommended. You must not skip doses unless advised by the provider.
Diet
After dental implant placement, you must keep yourself hydrated by having plenty of fluids relying on water, juices from apples, or cranberries. You must have a diet of soft foods and liquids during the first week after your surgery. After the whole week, you can gradually incorporate everyday foods into your diet but must refrain from crunchy and hard foods until the implant site has healed.
Oral Hygiene
Maintaining excellent oral hygiene is essential for proper recovery. On the night of your dental implant placement, use the recommended oral rinse by your provider without considering over-the-counter mouthwash brands containing alcohol because they are harmful to your oral health. After 48 hours of dental implant placement, you can use warm salt water rinses at least four to five times every day after meals.
Do not neglect to brush your teeth after getting dental implants. Instead, exercise caution when brushing around the surgical site.
Physical Activity
You cannot consider jumping into your regular physical activities soon after implant placement surgery. You might experience throbbing and bleeding near the implant site if you consider exercising or lifting heavy objects. It would help if you also refrained from bending forward as a precaution against dislodging the blood clot at the surgical site. It helps if you remember your body is not getting the nourishment it was getting earlier, and it might weaken you to limit your ability to exercise.
The after-care instructions provided by the dental implant provider ensure quicker and safer recovery without complications and allows you to have replacement teeth over the implants as soon as possible. You might not like the soft food diet or the restrictions on smoking or having alcohol. However, it is the optimal method to prevent infections and help recover faster by replacing the missing teeth you desperately want.
Providers of dental implants emphasize that you must adhere to the treatment plan they create before your surgery and the after-care instructions provided without exceptions unless you intend to get replacements for the dental implants the provider embedded in your jawbone to undergo another surgical procedure.
Excel Dental Care providers of dental implants recommend the after-care guide mentioned above to safeguard the placements in your jawbone. If you consider implant placement to replace missing teeth, please adhere to the after-care principle if you want replacement teeth as soon as possible.