Dental implant

[Stv22]

A short time ago my braces were removed. On the place where one tooth was missing, they placed a Maryland Bridge. I preferred a dental implant, but they said I could better wait a while because of my age. I am a 17 year old boy. The missing tooth I am talking about is located in the upper jaw between the front and the canine tooth on the (from my perspective) left side.

I had the following questions:

• My teeth would be able to change position in a couple of years, what would cause my implant to have a different position compared to my other teeth. But I am wearing a retainer every night to keep my teeth in place. With that retainer, my teeth can't change position, can they?
• If I would be fully grown, I could place a dental implant. How do I know if I am fully grown?
• When I would decide to place a dental implant, could I replace it if it doesn't look good anymore because I placed it too early?
• What would happen in the worst case if I decide to place a implant? Can it really do that much harm?

The reason I would prefer to place a dental implant already is because I am scared that my Maryland Bridge will break (I am really careful while eating and brushing my teeth because it broke earlier) and according to my orthodontist the bone on a place where the tooth is missing will disappear more and more. If I would place it right now, I could immediately place it. If I wait longer I need a bone graft.

Thank you very much for answering my questions!

 

[svor1988]

> When I would decide to place a dental implant, could I replace it if it doesn't look good anymore because I placed it too early?

Unfortunately they cannot easily remove the dental implant. The crown can be replaced, but not the post. You may note that they screw the post in, but they cannot unscrew it. Counter-intuitively they do not unscrew the implant after the implant had osseointegrated (bone grew to it securely) as that may fracture the jaw at the torque required. What must be done instead is to drill all around the implant to remove it.

> What would happen in the worst case if I decide to place a implant? Can it really do that much harm?

Yep. While they may quote a 95% or 98% success rate out 3-5 years from placement, that is still 1 out of 20 or 1 out of 50 people for whom those implants had failed... pretty high odds of failure given that the cost of failure is placed entirely on the patient given the practitioner had made no mistakes. Look up the lifespan of dental implants... 50% fail by the stated lifespan.

As an analogy, a friend in my high school went missing for a month, then she came back completely blind, walking around with a seeing stick. On vacation she'd taken an over the counter car sickness pill, which unknown to her and her family, it has a 1 in 100000 chance of permanent blindness as a side effect. Knowing those odds, I would tolerate the car-sickness...

Many things can go wrong, such as peri-implantitis (chronic infection), permanent nerve damage (e.g. permanent loss of feeling in face/tongue), or even the implant going up into your sinus cavity... with a sinus perforation/communication. Look up "dental implant negligence" or "dental implant malpractice" for some horror stories, though you may have to dig to find people's testimonies.

I was pressured into a dental implant at age 18... thinking my parents were paying for it, and the dentist says it's the best thing to do, and it was one of the worst decisions in my life... costing me over 30k in direct damages over the next 8 years in surgeries, CT scans, antibiotics for years, appointments, and work lost due to being sick so much (I was bedridden for 28 days at one point as infection was spreading around my skull). Indirect damages would include things such as me having to postpone my education two semesters due to being sick so much and unable to meet deadlines. Given the choice again I'd just go without a tooth there.