Implantología dental avanzada y estética facial. Advanced implantology & facial aesthetics. Dr. Pablo Furelos.
There are some patients that have had dental implants for more than 30 years, without experiencing any problem. This tells us about implants’ durability, which are always placed expecting them to remain indefinitely.
This is one of the main challenges when placing dental implants. It is necessary to place them thinking about what may happen in 20 years, although there is little bone. When it is planned that way, our point of view is different.
Titanium’s capacity for osteointegration is so good that even those implants that have been placed in a wrong way, having only one part of its surface integrated in the bone, can support the denture. This leads some professionals with little experience to place dental implants in awkward situations. In this situation there aren´t long lasting expectations and possibly in a short period of time problems will appear and with them, the progressive losing of implants. Usually failure appears after more than one year, so other factors can be argued instead of a deficient surgery.
In some occasions, more and more often, we receive patients with implants that have failed and we have to remove them. Only with a little part of it integrated, they show great resistance in their removal.
With dental implants there are not intermediate situations. There are no implants that are “almost” fine or “a bit” wrong. It might be fine, not producing discomfort with the passing of years, or it might be wrong, producing discomfort that will increase with the passing of time. It is a hugh difference with your natural teeth.
That is why it is necessary to follow certain basic criteria used to assure a long durability or in many cases indefinite one.
The selection of the kind of dental implant, which must be of excellent quality, to avoid the fracture of the material with the passing of time. There many dental implants in the market that meet this quality criteria, not necessarily the most expensive ones.
It is necessary to place enough implants in order to avoid an overload that, with the passing of time, will end up in a losing of bone integration (generally via periimplantitis) or fracture although the kind of dental implant was properly selected.
It is necessary to reinforce the bone with graft, thinking about a future weakening of the bone due to the passing of time. We are talking about reinforcing it although there is bone enough. It is even more necessary to settle the smallest faults of the bone.
In our clinic, they are always placed thinking about a long term, we never close a case until a long lasting permanence of the dental implants is guaranteed. That is why we started to offer a special agreement related to this area 15 years ago.