Am I Too Old or Too Young to Get Dental Implants?
If you have missing teeth and you’re considering dental implants, we’re happy to hear it. At 38th Street Dental in Austin, TX, we take care to educate patients on all of the treatment’s benefits. We often hear, “Can you be too young or too old to get dental implants?” The answer is yes, there is a minimum age. But there is no maximum age for our senior patients who would like to explore dental implants. Read on to learn more about your treatment options.
Considerations for Our Younger Implant Patients
You might know that braces are most effective when you’re younger and that removing wisdom teeth is best done in the teen years. That’s because the jawbone is still growing and hardening as late as 20 years old. Some people experience jawbone maturity as young as 17 and that’s often the case for girls. In order for the titanium implant posts to fuse properly with the bone and remain in the same place, your bone must have stopped growing. While it’s rarer for younger patients to undergo implant placement, there are two reasons we might recommend it:
Congenital Defects
Some people never develop all of their adult teeth. In fact, according to the National Foundation for Ectodermal Dysplasias, as many as 1 in 5 people are congenitally missing at least one adult tooth. Sometimes, this is an inherited trait that runs in families.
In nearly all these cases, we recommend replacing your missing tooth or teeth with implants. At my Austin dental office, we can use digital X-rays and other types of imaging to assess when your child is ready.
Trauma & Injury
Contact sports, scooter injuries, car accidents – these are just a few of the ways we see our patients become hurt and unfortunately, sometimes teeth that endure trauma cannot be saved. Whether we choose to place an implant sooner or wait until your child has reached a certain age will depend entirely on their case. Regardless of the specifics, we’ll likely recommend one or more implants to protect their oral and overall health.
Evaluating Seniors’ Candidacy
There really is no age limit that we put on dental implants. Instead, we’ll evaluate several factors like your oral and overall health to determine whether you’re a good candidate. Bone health, for example, can suffer as you age – especially if you’ve been missing teeth for quite some time – so we’ll take special care to screen you in this area. While some people might need bone grafting, All-on-4® dental implants can often overcome this obstacle. We'll also advise you to quit if you smoke or chew tobacco and make sure your blood sugar is well-controlled if you have diabetes.
Set up a Dental Implant Evaluation Today
It’s never too late to take pride in your smile. While we hope you found this blog post helpful, the only way to know if you qualify for dental implants is to visit our Austin office. At 38th Street Dental, we offer cutting-edge techniques like same-day dental implants and take pride in exceeding our patients’ expectations every step of the way. Contact our team today to get started.
