Have you considered getting dental implants and you're not sure whether they're right for you? There's a variety of reasons why dental implants might not be an option for you, and today in this post I want to go through them so that you can stay informed.
What is Dental Implants
Essentially, dental implants are a titanium screw that dental surgeons put down on the bone, and they can use them to replace a single tooth, multiple teeth, or a whole arch of teeth. So the process is, once you've got nice, healthy bone, the screw goes into the bone, and then they kind of close everything over.
It takes an average of good three to four months before the bone cells actually grow onto the surface of the dental implant, and at that point, the dental implant is referred to as osseo-integration. The dental implant is actually a part of your bone. Once we've achieved that level of healing, then we can start building teeth on top of the dental implant. If you're curious to learn more about dental implants in the whole process, subscribe to this blog as we will go in depth on the whole process, from start to finish, on getting dental implants.
Who are Candidates for Dental Implants?
So the first thing I want to do is to breakdown what it means to be a good candidate for dental implants. For implants to be successful, basically you have to have two things. You have to have a healthy patient with a healthy mouth, and you have to have adequate bone.
There are really only three major health concerns that give us red flags with dental implants.
1. Uncontrolled diabetes, the main reason for that is uncontrolled diabetes hinders healing process and if your bone and your body doesn't heal properly, the bone in the body is never going to form correctly around the implant, and we're just kind of setting ourselves up for failure.
2. The other concern that we have is bone growing medicine. So your Fosamax, your Bo Neva, while these are things we can work around, definitely something you want to bring up, because those impair the body's ability to heal around the implant.
3. The other factor is healthy bone, and what I mean by that is, we need to have an adequate quantity of bone, because the dental implant needs to have bone surrounding all the way circumferentially around it. But it also has to have an adequate thickness. If the ridge is too thin, the dental implant runs the risk of not only failing, but possibly breaking the bone, and that doesn't mean that it's not possible. We can always grow bone. We have lots of bone growing procedures, through grafting, augmentation, but these are all things that we'll discuss with you once we've done a cone beam scan, which is a three dimensional scan that lets us see exactly the quantity of bone and the quality of bone.
The other advantage of a cone beam scan is that we can plan out your surgery from start to finish, so that we've actually already digitally, virtually placed your implant. We know exactly where we want to put it, so we know we've got the best chance for success. But also that allows me, as the restorative doctor, to plan out the tooth or the bridge or the denture that goes on top of it for an ideal success.
What is the Right Age to Do Dental Implants Surgery?
One question we get asked is, how young or how old can I be to get implants or not get implants? And it's a great question. Of course, the answer depends on many factors. To be honest with you, there really isn't an age limit at the top end. As long as you're healthy and you've got good bone and we feel that you'll heal, age is just a number. We've got patients that we did, a 95 year old patient did a single tooth implant, turned out great.
On the minimum end of the age range. When you're younger, it presents a problem, because we don't know where your bone is going to end up. For males, generally under 25 and females under 21 we're really not comfortable placing dental implants at this time.
Because, you may put the dental implant in the bone, you plant it out and it looks perfect. You put the teeth on top everything's wonderful, then they continue to grow. At 25 for females, or at around 30 to 35 years all of a sudden, the bone, the teeth and tissue around that implant have grown and changed, and your dental implant is still stuck where you placed it some years ago.
So that presents a problem, because a successful dental implant has bone all the way around it. So to change that, it's a pretty invasive procedure where you actually have to drill away all the bone around the implant. You have to refine it out, and that leaves a pretty big hole, basically, that you have to fill with bone and you can replace with implants.
Frustrating as it is, and we do get a lot of cases where, whether it's a medical problem or missing teeth or congenitally missing teeth, where we have parents that are like, can't we just do these dental implants? Honestly, it's better to wait. In those situations, we've got lots of techniques to kind of camouflage missing teeth, whether it's resin, bonded bridges, natural bridges, removal appliances, there are lots of things we can do for that young person until they get old enough and the bone is fully grown.
Another aspect that affects the success rate of implants are smokers and chewers. Smoking creates not only a lot of immense heat in the dental cavity, but also the actual action of smoking can draw out the blood clot and cause the area not to heal the way we want, the chemicals and the carcinogens and basically all the stuffs they put in cigarettes and in tobacco can really damage the mouth and not allow it to heal.
For a dental implant to be successful, we want to create that ideal site, that ideal area where the body can make it successful. Now, if you are a smoker, we can work around that, we can use Nicorette patches. We can do things for cessation of smoking.
In fact, I've had a lot of patients use getting a dental implant as a reason for them to finally quit smoking. They do the dental implant, they stop smoking for six weeks. While smoking is not a contraindication for dental implants, its something we definitely want to discuss and plan for.
Another people that are not a candidate for dental implants are people that have really poor bone whether, e.g you've been missing teeth for a long time and your bones resorbed. Another category is people with really bad oral hygiene, and nobody really likes to talk about it, but if you don't brush your teeth and don't take care of your teeth, I don't think you should make the investment in getting teeth put back in, because if you don't keep the mouth clean, just like you can get cavities in your normal teeth, you cannot get cavities onto titanium dental implant, but you can get plaque, and you can get build up, and you can cause bone loss. So you really need to be motivated to take care of them.
The last category, is people that aren't motivated to clear and clean for dental implants. Sometimes people think, they've got implants, they don't have to brush, they don't have to floss. But in fact, the opposite is true. A lot of time with implants, you have to increase your attention to your hygiene to make sure they're successful.
What steps do dental surgeons take to see if you're a candidate for implants?
Every patient gets a three dimensional cone beam scan, and what that does, is to allow dental surgeons to see a big picture, to kind of see not only the areas where he might place a dental implants, but the adjacent teeth.
Make sure everything is healthy, evaluate the bone strength, the bone quality, and allows dentist to kind of see around the nooks and crannies that sometimes we can't see and plan for. Dentist will also have an in depth discussion with you about what your goals are.
You know, not every patient is the same. Just because you're missing a tooth doesn't mean you need a dental implant. There are lots of other options. We will discuss that in other post, but sometimes an implant isn't the right solution.
Having that in depth conversation with you to make sure you want what dental surgeon can provide for you, you're all on the same page. So if this sounds like you and you have questions about whether dental implants are right for you, click on the link chat with us. We would love to have you in, we'd love to meet you, we'll take a look at your mouth, and we'll sit down together and figure out what the best plan for you is.
Your head nods are very helpful, by the way, just letting you know that. It makes me feel like I've got my point across. Let's say you're a good candidate for dental implants, but you still have some questions, don't hesitate to hit the comments box below.
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