Minimum Age or Age Restriction for Dental Implants
Your natural teeth are the best thing to have in your mouth and you must try to preserve them for as long as possible. However, once a natural tooth has been lost, it is important to replace missing teeth, not only for the look of your smile and aesthetic reasons, but also for proper oral health, bone health, your overall health that is helped by your ability to consume and chew healthy foods. Oftentimes, a dental implant is often the best solution to replace missing teeth. Dental implants are the closest thing to your natural teeth in look, feel, and function.
The implant is a prosthesis consisting of a titanium screw to be inserted into the bone of your maxilla (above) or of the mandible (below). This implant essentially “grows” into your jawbones and becomes part of your anatomy. Once this is placed, there is a healing process of about 2-3 months, after which time, a prosthetic tooth- an artificial crown indistinguishable from a "real" tooth- is placed on the implant.
In this way, full functionality in chewing and speaking will be recovered, the neighboring teeth will not move trying to occupy the empty space (and creating further imbalances in the arch), the facial tissues will not collapse, and there will not be all of the inconveniences typical of removable prostheses, such as gum irritation, jawbone loss, or trouble eating, chewing, and talking.
If I lose a tooth at 90, can I think about implantology?
With the increase in average lifespan, more and more people of advanced age are getting implants. If you are in need of an implant, you might not consider this possibility thinking you are not young enough and strong enough to face the operation, however, this is simply not true.
In reality, there is no age limit for dental implants. Successful interventions are performed on patients who are over 80 or 90 years of age. In fact, right in the retirement years, when the greatest loss of teeth inevitably occurs, implants are more useful for improving the quality of life.
The only effective limit is represented by the conditions of the bone on which the screw is to be inserted; if the bone is judged capable of firmly maintaining an implant, there are no reasons not to proceed (net of general health conditions and any ongoing infections in the oral cavity). In this regard, it is important to always keep our bones healthy and strong by taking the right daily amount of Calcium!
Dental implant for children? Better to wait!
Unlike advanced age, it is the younger one that has limitations. Fortunately, it is rarer for a patient to lose a tooth during childhood or adolescence, but when this happens, the implant cannot be carried out until the bones of the skull have completed their development. There is no defined age for this. It can be said that it generally varies between 17 and 20 years. In these cases, it is necessary to evaluate the situation with X-rays, to understand if the bone growth is actually completed.