I’ve had dentures for a about three years now. I’ve been trying to save up for dental implants, but it is taking longer than I expected. Will there come a point where it will be too late for me to switch? If so, I wonder if it is important enough for me to take out a loan to get them now. Any advice you have would be appreciated.
Evelyn
Dear Evelyn,
I’d be happy to help you out here. Though, I won’t tell you what to do with your finances, what I can tell you are general principles and what happens inside your jaw. You can make a prioritized decision based on that.
Technically, it is never too late to get dental implants. However, there is a complication that has to be dealt with the longer it takes you to get there. As soon as your teeth are removed, your body recognizes that you do not have teeth roots in your jaw any longer. Our bodies are designed to be as efficient as possible with its resources, so recoginizing that it no longer needs to support your teeth, it will immediately begin resorbing the minerals in your jawbone in order to use them in other places where it perceives they will be more useful.
It’s a marvelous system. Unfortunately, it does have a big drawback. The loss of those minerals will slowly shrink your jawbone In order to get dental implants, you will need a complete healthy jaw bone. This is because that bone has to integrate with the implants in order to keep them secure. There is a bone grafting procedure you can have done to deal with this issue. The longer you’re without your teeth or implants, the more bone grafting you’ll need.
In reality, even if you didn’t want dental implants you would need to deal with this anyway. That is because after ten or so years, depending on the speed your body loses jawbone, you will no longer have enough left to keep in your removable dentures, which rest on the ridge of your jawbone. This is known as facial collapse. I have a before and after image of this above my reply.
When that happens you have three choices: One, keep the status quo and remain unable to keep in your dentures, which will reduce you to a soft foods diet. Two, have bone grafting done and get new dentures, which starts the whole cycle over. Three, have bone grafting done and get implant supported dentures, which will prevent facial collapse. This is because the implants are prosthetic teeth roots so your body realizes there are “teeth” there to support again, leaving the minerals (and your jawbone) intact.
I hope this helps you make a decision.
This blog is brought to you by friendly dentists in Decatur, AL Drs. Drake and Wallace.