Most Common Reasons People Think They Cannot Get Dental Implants Are Workable
What would disqualify you from getting dental implants? Is it money? Is it infected teeth? Is it the fear of pain and discomfort? I’d also like to share some reasons why you think you might not be a candidate for dental implants and what options you might have to make sure you can receive dental implants. And in the rare case that you may not be able to get dental implants, I’d love to show you some options for how to take care of your missing teeth without using dental implants.
Let’s start with the most common reasons people think they can’t get dental implants. I’m too old. I battle gum and bone disease for a long time. I’m on certain medications. I have diabetes. There are lots of different reasons why people think, “Well, I can’t get dental implants.” And I’m here to show you that most of those problems with cheap dental implants we can work with and change and modify, either lifestyle, medicines, or make additions to your existing health to make you a candidate for implants.
And just so you know, dental implants don’t require you to have perfect teeth or a perfect mouth and just be missing one tooth in an otherwise ideal setup. A lot of times we can utilize implants to help make an unhealthy mouth much healthier. The only thing that dental implants actually require is a good healthy quality of bone and a good amount of bone. And other than that, there really are no contraindications to dental implants. We want to make sure that when we put the implant in the bone, we’ve got enough bone to support the implant and that your body is healthy enough to grow new bone cells onto that implant so that we can come down the road and put a crown on there for you to chew and function with later.
Insufficient Bone Is the Primary Disqualifier for Dental Implants, and It Is Often Treatable
When we look at what actually disqualifies you from getting implants, the two biggest things are if there’s not enough bone and there’s not enough quality bone in the area where we want to place the implant. And that’s not necessarily a hard no. It can be a situation where if you’re missing a tooth for a long time, the bone has resorbed and shrunk away, so you don’t have enough bone in the area. We’ve got lots of great ways that we can actually grow new bone in that area. And at the end of the day, it really only adds on a couple months to the overall treatment plan, but we have to really supplement that bone and make sure it’s a good site for the implant.
If the body is not able to heal correctly around the implant, that’s the only true contraindication to implants.
Uncontrolled Diabetes Prevents the Bone Healing That Dental Implants Require
The two biggest reasons why your body probably won’t be able to accept or take an implant: number one is uncontrolled diabetes. That’s a big issue because if your body’s not able to handle your diabetes, it’s not going to heal well. So anything we do in your mouth is not going to heal properly. So the first step in that situation is to get the diabetes under control.
If you have diabetes, you should be familiar with the term HbA1c, and it’s basically a measurement of your blood sugar. That’s something you would want to work with your implant surgeon on to make sure it’s under a certain amount so we know that your body’s going to heal and adapt to that implant correctly. If you have controlled diabetes, that’s great. That’s fine. As long as we know what your HbA1c number is and we know that your body’s going to respond in a predictable way, that shouldn’t be a problem. Uncontrolled diabetes is problematic not only for what we’re trying to do in your mouth, but overall for your health, and that’s something that you should really get control of.
Bone-Modifying Medications Require Careful Timing Before Implant Placement
The other major health implication that gives us pause for implants is any kind of bone-growing medications you’re on. Unfortunately, there are plenty of medications out there: Fosamax, Boniva, IV bone medications. A lot of treatments for osteoporosis and osteopenia use these medications and they’re great for their purpose, but unfortunately they do impact the healing in the mouth and they will impact how implants are going to take into the bone.
And again, it’s not an absolute contraindication. A lot of times we can work with your endocrinologist, work with your general doctor, and take what’s called a drug holiday where we basically time the implant placement out to where your body’s going to have the most ideal chance to heal and make that implant successful.
Heavy Smoking Directly Causes Implant Failure and Must Be Addressed Before Treatment
Another red flag for implant placement is going to be heavy smoking. Whether that’s cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, vaping, marijuana, anything that produces a lot of heat and a lot of the sucking forces and all those chemicals in your mouth will really have a negative impact on your healing. So if you’re fully committed to smoking and you’re not going to be able to cut back or even take a holiday while you’re going through the healing, that’s going to be something that we’re going to have to work through because a lot of times heavy smoking is a direct cause of implant failure.
Unrealistic Expectations About Implant Outcomes Can Disqualify a Patient Too
Here’s another contraindication to dental implants that a lot of doctors won’t tell you: a patient that comes in with unrealistic expectations. If you don’t realize that implants are really just a solution for missing or broken down teeth, you might expect too much from implants. Implants are a wonderful treatment, but they’re not going to get you back to how you were when you were 18 years old, had all your teeth, beautiful, healthy smile. We can camouflage a lot of things. We can restore a lot of things. We can replace a lot of things. But you have to realize that it is an investment in both time and money to take care of the implants going forward. It’s not a one-and-done. You have to continue home care, hygiene, and regular checkups with your dental team to make sure everything is going okay. As long as you’re committed to that home care and taking care of that implant, it will last a lifetime.
Age, Long-Term Denture Use, and Past Implant Failures Do Not Automatically Disqualify You
Let’s set the record straight on some things that people think are automatic disqualifiers for implants. The first one and the most common question I get is, “I’m way too old for implants. I’m over 60. I’m over 70.” I can tell you right now, we just this week had an 80-plus-year-old patient get four implants. Everything went smooth. They healed great. Got some wonderful teeth on them. It’s fantastic. So age is just a number. As long as you’re healthy and you can recover and as long as you have good bone, age does not matter at all.
Even if you’ve worn dentures for years and think there’s no way you could be a candidate for implants, that’s not necessarily true. A lot of times, even if you’ve had dentures for a long time and your bone has shrunk down and there’s not a lot of space or room for implants as your jaw sits now, we do have lots of options to either augment that bone and grow the bone so we’ve got enough thickness. Alternatively, another option is what’s called mini dental implants. These are implants that are smaller in diameter and require less bone. So we’ve got lots of options whether we need to make your bone larger or work with the bone level that you currently have.
Even if you’ve lost multiple teeth or had failed denture work before, that’s not a contraindication to implants. A lot of times implants fail for a myriad of reasons. And as long as you go back and start fresh, make sure you’ve got good healthy bone, and make sure the patient is going to take great care of them, past failures don’t necessarily mean you can’t try again and be successful in the future with implants.
What You Need to Do to Become a Good Implant Candidate
The real question I want you to ask yourself is: what do I need to do to be a good candidate for implants? Not, am I disqualified from implants, or will I ever get implants. You need to turn that around and make sure you’re a good candidate. And by that I mean make sure you’ve got your blood pressure under control. Make sure you’ve got a nice healthy bone level. Make sure you’re doing good proper home care. Make sure you don’t have inflamed, irritated gums. Make sure that you don’t have cavities and broken down teeth. And if you do, come in. We can get a plan together and we can kind of work out a way to get you to health so that we can put some implants in successfully.
As someone who’s been restoring implants for over 20 years, the most important thing is planning ahead and making sure you know exactly where you’re going to place the implants, how you’re going to restore the implants, and how you’re going to have the patient take care of those implants. At the end of the day, it’s all about the planning and not just rejecting people from getting implants.
If you’re worried that you might not qualify for dental implants, don’t automatically self-disqualify yourself and not pursue them. What I want you to do is get a proper evaluation with a qualified dentist and ask better questions to make sure you can get those implants. And remember, very few people are actually not implant candidates. Most people, even if they have contraindications, just need the right preparation to get them ready for implants.
I’m Dr. Brett Langston, owner and prosthodontist at Dental Implant Aesthetic Specialist here in Brookhaven, Georgia. I’m here to help you watch your mouth.
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