Tooth loss can detract from your daily quality of life as once-basic tasks, like chewing food, enunciating clearly, and smiling confidently, suddenly become more challenging. Thankfully, your dentist can provide dental implants to replace one or more missing teeth.
Unlike dental bridges and dentures, these restorations include a titanium rod that’s surgically embedded into your jawbone for added strength and stability. However, some older adults worry that their bones are too frail for this treatment. Continue reading to learn why it’s not necessarily too late to get dental implants regardless of your age!
What Are Dental Implants?
Whether you lost one tooth or several, implants can be placed to fill in the gaps in your grin by anchoring customized prosthetics, like dental crowns, bridges, or dentures, to rebuild your arches. Your dentist can place anywhere from one to four or more metallic rods to function like roots, firmly anchored directly in your jaw.
It can take three to six or more months to recover from your procedure because that’s usually how long it takes your mouth to produce enough new bone growth to encompass and fuse with the biocompatible titanium pole fully. Once this process of osseointegration is complete, your dentist will anchor your restorations for a beautifully rebuilt smile.
How Does Aging Impact Dental Implants?
Most people develop weaker teeth and bones as they grow older, because the body doesn’t heal and regenerate at the same rate as it did in their youth. In your later years, you break down more bone material than you form, resulting in a loss of density. Unfortunately, different factors, like hormonal changes, reduced calcium and vitamin D intake, and lack of physical activity, can accelerate this degeneration. That means you might not produce enough new material to fuse with your implant, increasing the likelihood of failure.
Furthermore, your jaw loses up to 25% of the surrounding bone mass after teeth go missing because there are fewer roots to stimulate additional cell growth with every bite down. If you’ve waited a long time since you lost teeth to replace them, your jawbone might be too thin for these restorations.
Am I Too Old for Dental Implants?
Many elderly patients wonder if it’s too late for them to undergo the dental implant procedure, but that’s not usually the case. If your jawbone is too frail initially, an additional bone graft can sometimes bulk it up enough to proceed once you’ve healed. Your dentist can also address other dental issues that might interfere, like cavities or gum disease, to increase the chances of success.
Consulting your dentist is the best way to learn whether you’re a good candidate for dental implants, and if you’re not, they can often help improve your condition enough to continue!
About the Practice
At Indy Dental Group, people of all ages benefit from a team of dentists dedicated to helping them improve their lives by enhancing their oral health. They collaborate to provide a comprehensive menu of services to meet all your family’s dental needs. Then, they combine a caring approach with state-of-the-art equipment to increase your comfort while delivering accurate results intended to last. They proudly perform each step of the dental implant process in the office, including surgery, so you don’t have to seek additional outside providers. If you want to replace missing teeth, you can request a consultation on the website or by calling one of their conveniently located offices.