Mini-Implants

At Dr. Dipika Shah’s Holmdel, New Jersey practice, we perform dental implants on patients who require tooth restorations. For people who cannot receive full-size implants for medical conditions or lack of jaw bone to support regular implants, mini-implants can substitute some of the functions.

Mini-implants are titanium screws or ceramic rods used as mini implants to support missing tooth. Because of this, they can be placed without Dr. Shah needing to make incisions in the patient’s gums, reducing recovery time. Though stabilizing the jaw bone is one of the benefits of full-size implants, they also require a significant amount of jaw bone tissue to be present to fuse with. Mini-implants obviously require less, and can be placed in situations where full-size implants would be too cumbersome or lead to complications.

While full-size implants replace individual teeth, mini-implants are most commonly used to anchor dentures. People who have lost a lot of jaw bone tissue tend to have also lost a lot of teeth, and it makes more sense for all the teeth in a jaw to all be replaced at once with a less invasive procedure than to do it one-by-one in a multi-step process. Mini-implants used in this way provide a mild amount of reinforcement to the jaw bone, which could make it less likely to shift and warp the patient’s face around the dentures.

Dr. Dipika Shah, MAGD, operates at 723 North Beers Street, Suite 2F, Holmdel, New Jersey, 07733-1512. To schedule an appointment, call 732-264-8180 or visit DentistNJ.com and fill out a contact sheet.

 

Oral Cancers and HPV

As a Master in the Academy of General Dentistry, Dr. Dipika Shah has maintained an up-to-date knowledge of trends in oral health and dentistry. As such, she is concerned with recent studies finding that the rate of new oral cancer diagnoses has remained steady despite progress in educating the public about the dangers of tobacco. It is likely that the continued commonality of oral cancers, even while the frequency of most other cancers is declining, is due to a particular strain of the human papilloma virus (HPV).

While oral cancers resulting from nicotine and alcohol use are most commonly found in elderly men, cancers of the mouth and throat with HPV DNA occur most often in men between the ages of thirty and fifty. It is likely that people who are sexually active but are not smokers or heavy drinkers are unaware that they are in a high-risk group. Most HPV infections heal without the host having ever been aware of them, and HPV-related oral cancers tend to occur far back in the throat, where patients are unlikely to notice them until they are experiencing problems from tumors or lesions. However, HPV-related oral cancers are responsive to treatment if caught early, so it is greatly beneficial for younger people to undergo oral cancer screenings.

Dr. Dipika Shah, MAGD, operates at 723 North Beers Street, Suite 2F, Holmdel, New Jersey, 07733-1512. To schedule an appointment, call 732-264-8180 or visit DentistNJ.com and fill out a contact sheet.