Is It Too Late for Implants?

So, you lost a tooth in your 20s, and now it’s 25 or 30 years later, you’re in your 40s, you’ve got the time and the money, and you really want to replace it. Is that an option?

Yes, absolutely. Implants are a great solution. Ideally, it’s better to replace the missing tooth closer to the date when you actually lost it. The main reason for that is because the body is very efficient. When you have teeth, they maintain the bone. When you lose teeth, the body realizes, “Hey, I don’t need to keep that same amount of bone there,” and starts shrinking down and resorbing away.

If it’s just one tooth that you’re missing, the adjacent teeth may help maintain some bone in that area, but unfortunately, over time, and the longer you wait, there’s a good chance your body has resorbed that bone and taken away the ideal site for an implant.

How Dentists Evaluate Bone Health

When we plan for an implant, whether you’ve just lost the tooth or you’ve been missing it for years, we do a three-dimensional cone beam image. That allows us to look at the space where we want to place the implant and evaluate not only if we have the right amount of bone, but also the right quality and thickness of bone. For an implant to be successful, it must be fully surrounded by a healthy perimeter of bone.

In a situation where you’ve lost a tooth for a long time and the bone has resorbed, it might not seem like a great spot, but we now have the ability to grow bone in that area through bone grafting procedures. Sometimes that’s necessary, sometimes it’s not.

Bone Grafting and Sinus Lifts

If it’s an upper tooth, the sinus can drop down in that area and we may need to do what’s called a sinus lift. These are very common procedures, and they basically help reestablish the right amount of bone so we can place an implant successfully.

If you lost that tooth 20 years ago, don’t give up hope that you’ve missed your opportunity. Sure, it’s easier closer to when you lose the tooth, but we have ways to build that bone and allow you to get the implant later on.

For those unfamiliar with what a sinus lift is, it really has nothing to do with your nasal sinuses. It’s more toward the back of your upper jaw. You have little sacs of air that scallop around the roots of your teeth. When you lose a tooth, that bone drops down along with the air sac. To make room for the implant, we gently push the sinus out of the way and place bone material there to create the proper thickness for a successful implant.

When Bone Grafting Isn’t Possible

If your body has remodeled so much bone that bone grafting or regeneration isn’t possible, there are still many other ways to replace that missing tooth. We can do a bridge, placing crowns on the adjacent teeth with a replacement tooth cemented in between, so it looks and feels like your natural teeth.

In cases where implants or bridges aren’t possible, we can create removable options. We specialize in partials and dentures that replace all or some teeth with a very lifelike look and feel. The only trade-off is that they need to be removed at night.

Final Thoughts

It’s never too late to replace missing teeth, whether you lost them in your 20s, 30s, 50s, or even 80s. Depending on the quality of bone in the area, we have many different paths to get you back to full function, appearance, and comfort.

If you’re considering replacing a front tooth, a back tooth, or multiple teeth, we can handle all of that here in our office in Brookhaven.

I’m Dr. Brett Langston, owner of Dental Implant and Aesthetic Specialists, and I’m here to help you watch your mouth.