Is It Ever Too Late to Get a Dental Implant?

Can You Still Get Dental Implants?

Overview

• Dental implants can be placed years after extraction
• It’s never too late to have a dental implant
• Dental implants can benefit patients of any age

However…We’ll be frank. The earlier you treat tooth loss, the easier (and cheaper) your treatment will be. Even choosing to replace your tooth loss initially with traditional devices like dental bridges or dentures can contribute to lengthier treatments down the line - and this is because of bone loss.It’s never too late to get dental implants - and it’s not impossible if you’re found initially to be an unsuitable candidate to prepare the mouth to stabilise implants. However, it is more complex.

Bone loss can happen within six months of tooth loss

When you lose a tooth, the bone in your jaw begins to weaken, break down, and deteriorate. This process, which dentists call bone resorption, happens when teeth are no longer present to stimulate bone growth or appropriately distribute chewing, clenching, and biting forces. The bone breaks down when this stimulation is absent and cannot grow back. Learn more about the consequences of tooth loss.

What this means for dental implant treatment

Initially, you might not be bothered about the bone breaking down in your jaw - which is fine if you want to seek alternative missing teeth treatments like dental bridges or dentures, which do not require a healthy sufficient amount of bone to work.However, dental implants do. They need bone to work successfully, as they rely on integrating with the bone to act like an artificial tooth root, making it a more advanced procedure than other traditional prosthetics.

What happens if you don’t have enough bone for a dental implant

During an implant consultation with a dentist, we’ll take a 3D scan of your jaw, highlighting your bone density.If we find that you do not have enough bone to support an implant, it does not necessarily mean you can’t ever have one place.This means that an additional procedure will be required to make implantation possible, which is why treatment times can be longer and more expensive.For example, some dentists might tell you no, full stop. In contrast, more experienced, dedicated implant dentists like ourselves would recommend a bone graft procedure, in which we rebuild and restore the bone where we need to place the implants.If you go ahead with a bone graft procedure, it usually delays treatment around 6 months, as we have to wait for it to heal before we can consider implantation. Bone grafts cost from £950 on top of your dental implant treatment.

A sinus lift might be needed instead

If you need to build up bone in the upper jaws, a sinus lift might be recommended instead. The difference between a sinus lift and a bone graft is the area of the jaw where the procedure is performed and the type of materials used.A sinus lift is a pre-prosthetic dental procedure used to create more bone in the upper jaws. It is typically recommended when the volume of bone in the space between molars and premolars needs to be increased. Sinus lifts cost from £1,950.