Periodontal disease is one of the most common diseases in dentistry, with a prevalence rate of up to 90% in adults. When suffering from periodontal disease, the gums become inflamed, bleeding and bad breath in the lighter cases, while in the heavier cases, the teeth become sore and painful, chewing is weak, and even loosening and shifting, which eventually leads to tooth loss. Periodontal disease causes great pain, seriously damages health and affects the quality of life. Usually, dentists will advise patients with missing teeth to restore their missing teeth as early as possible, but in the face of the many options for restoring missing teeth, how should patients choose? Is the current fashionable and popular dental implant suitable for restoring missing teeth in patients with periodontal disease? Let’s learn more about periodontal disease and dental implants from the following aspects. Why does periodontal disease cause tooth loss? Periodontal disease is a disease that occurs in the supporting tissues of the teeth (periodontal tissues), including gum disease that only involves the gum tissues and periodontitis that affects the deep periodontal tissues (periodontal membrane, alveolar bone, and dental bone). The most common of these is periodontitis, which is also the main cause of tooth loss in adults. It is an inflammatory disease caused by bacteria that invades the gum and periodontal tissues, mostly in a chronic process, and is a destructive disease that can be triggered and aggravated by local factors including calculus, food impaction, poor restorations, bite and jaw trauma, as well as some systemic factors. When the inflammation spreads to the deep periodontal tissues, it will lead to gingival recession and periodontal pocket formation, while the alveolar bone gradually undergoes pathological resorption, and when the bone tissue resorption reaches a certain level, the teeth will loosen or even fall out. Why is it important to restore missing teeth as early as possible? Some people think that since there are so many teeth in the mouth, it is not a big deal if one or two are missing. In fact, missing teeth can have a negative impact on the whole body and mind of the patient. Especially for patients with periodontal disease and poor oral health, the impact of missing teeth is even greater. Missing teeth not only affects the face, pronunciation and eating, but also causes the teeth in the adjacent gap to tilt and shift to the missing area for a long time, and the teeth in the opposite jaw to elongate, so that the normal adjacent relationship between the remaining teeth is lost, resulting in food embedding and misalignment of bite, which can cause temporomandibular joint disease in serious cases. After tooth loss, the alveolar bone loses functional stimulation and will gradually shrink. Severe tooth loss and missing teeth can lead to reduced masticatory function, thus reducing the physiological stimulation of the cranium, thus potentially bringing forward the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. What are the advantages of dental implants for restoring missing teeth in patients with periodontal disease? There are three main options for restoring missing teeth: removable dentures, fixed bridges and dental implants. Each of the three methods has its own advantages, but due to the specificity of intra-oral conditions in patients with periodontal disease, it is necessary to have some understanding of these methods before choosing them. For patients with periodontitis, since the alveolar bone has been damaged to varying degrees, i.e. the roots of the remaining teeth in the mouth are no longer strong, they cannot withstand large forces like normal teeth, otherwise they will accelerate the destruction of periodontal tissue by inflammation. The movable teeth are more widely available and cheaper, but they need to be fixed in place by using clasps to hold other teeth, and they need to be taken off and cleaned every day. When chewing and taking on and off the dentures, they will produce a certain burden and bad torque on the adjacent teeth, which is very unfavorable to the affected teeth that already have inflammation. The most typical fixed bridge is to grind down the teeth on both sides of the missing part, put on a porcelain crown, and use the teeth on both sides as a bridge base, with a porcelain tooth in the middle to repair the missing tooth gap. The biggest advantage of this method is the beauty and convenience, no foreign body feeling, but periodontitis patients should also carefully consider this method, it is actually the use of missing teeth on both sides of the adjacent teeth to bear all the chewing force, if the two sides of the adjacent teeth are healthy teeth, there is no problem, but as we said, the periodontitis patient’s teeth are relatively weak, if the additional force, is undoubtedly to add insult to injury! . Dental implant may be unfamiliar to most people, it is a small surgical procedure to implant an artificial root into the alveolar bone of the missing tooth area, and after 1 to 3 months, when the artificial root fits into the alveolar bone, then a porcelain crown is made on the artificial root. Compared with the first two restorative methods, its advantages are obvious: it does not use the traditional dental rings or braces, the artificial tooth root alveolar bone closely integrated, like a real tooth rooted in the mouth, with strong retention and stability, without grinding the next healthy teeth, no harm to the teeth. Since the artificial root is deeply planted in the bone, it can withstand normal chewing force, can produce functional stimulation to the alveolar bone, and effectively delay the shrinkage of the alveolar bone, and because the dental implant is almost the same as natural teeth in function and aesthetics, it is called the third set of human teeth. These advantages indicate that dental implants are ideal for restoring missing teeth in patients with periodontal disease. Dental implants are now recognized by the dentistry community as the preferred restorative option for missing teeth due to their outstanding benefits. The fact that periodontal disease was once listed as a contraindication to dental implants has made patients with periodontal disease suspicious of this method, which is actually only relative. Because the presence of inflammation can affect the healing of the artificial tooth root and the alveolar bone, it is necessary to ensure that there is no acute pathological state and infection in the mouth before performing the implantation. Therefore, patients with periodontal disease can undergo the dental implant surgery based on systematic periodontal treatment to keep the inflammation under control. It is worth noting that for loose teeth with advanced periodontal disease, it is recommended to extract them as soon as possible since they have no retention value, so that the infected lesions can be eliminated and the alveolar bone can be preserved to the maximum extent possible without being resorbed, which will facilitate the restoration of missing teeth later. Dental implants will be a boon to patients with periodontal disease for restorative treatment after tooth loss.