How Successful Are Dental Implants?
Provided thorough criteria of case selection and clinical protocols are adhered to, dental implants can have a success rate of 97% or more. In some cases, such as in the anterior mandible, the success rate is close to 99%. Your periodontist will assess you and advise you if you are a suitable candidate for dental implants. To improve implant success, a CT scan is made of your jaw, generating a data file. This data allows a 3-Dimensional view of your bone; it’s true height, width, and most importantly, your actual jaw bone density exactly where each implant will be placed. Using sophisticated 3-D implant planning software, we plan the exact location of the implants. This enables us to do “virtual surgery” on the computer, vastly simplifying treatment planning, and reduces surgical time and discomfort.
Dental implants are designed to be permanent. There are numerous factors related to long term success. Implants fail for the same reason your own teeth have failed: bone and gum breakdown, lack of proper daily care and hygiene, not maintaining regularly scheduled professional check-ups, accidents or a newly occurring medical condition that affects the tissues of your mouth. Initial healing is a key factor contributing to long term success of your implant. It is a well established fact that smoking, before or after implant placement, will cause lowered success rates and/or failures. Excessive pressure and/or grinding of your teeth can also cause problems with the bone bonding with the implant and should be avoided. Dental implant reconstruction is one of the most successful procedures in the medical/dental implant fields such as knee, hip, etc. with long term clinical results in excess of 92-93%.
