ORAL & MAXILLOFACIAL SURGERY
Rayeon Kim
Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon
A missing front tooth should look like the tooth that was there.
- Graduate, Pusan National University School of Dentistry
- Specialist in oral and maxillofacial surgery
- Former Clinical Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Kyung Hee University Hospital at Gangdong
- Full member, Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons · Korean Society of Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
A front-tooth implant is different from a molar implant. With molars, chewing force comes first; with front teeth, what comes first is whether it looks natural when you talk and smile. So Dr. Rayeon Kim does not look only at whether the implant bonds to bone. Dr. Kim also looks at how the gum wraps the tooth, whether its height matches the neighbors, and whether its tip resembles the teeth beside it.
After a tooth is removed, the gum and bone shrink quickly. Leave the space empty and place an implant later, and the new tooth comes out too short or too long, with dark gaps between teeth. A front-tooth implant is surgery that decides, from the day the tooth is lost, how to preserve the bone and gum. The day of placement is only part of that process, not its start.
There is also the option of shaving the neighboring teeth to hang a bridge. If you want to keep healthy neighbors unshaved, an implant in the gap is the right choice. But for people with thin bone, receded gums, or a lot of gum showing when they smile, the order of treatment changes. We do not hide that difference.
Sometimes a tooth goes on right after surgery; sometimes a temporary is used until the gum settles. Either way, the goal is the same: when you open your mouth, no one can tell it was placed — it looks like the front tooth that was always there.
