When flossing around your dental implants, it is important to remember their shape in order to floss them properly. Imagine your natural tooth. In general, teeth have ice cream cone shaped roots, smooth and conical. When you floss your natural teeth, your floss glides up and down the root surface easily with little interference from the crown of the tooth. However, dental implant teeth tend to be shaped more like a lollypop. They are more bulbous at the crown of the tooth and get slenderer where the crown touches the implant. When flossing a dental implant, it is important to really wrap your floss around this area and remove the plaque that gets caught where the implant crown is attached. Keeping your implant clean, especially at the gumline will prevent inflammation and possible infection.