What Can Cause Your Dental Implant Fail?

Dental implants are basically man-made artificial dental roots, which can be used to replace damaged or missing teeth and support fixed or removable protheses. They usually made from medical titanium, but new materials like zirconia are also becoming more common.

None of the available methods of replacement of missing or severely damaged teeth can match the stability or strength, longevity, functionality or versatility as well as esthetic attraction of dental implants. Dental implants are the best thing to have a full set of normal, perfectly healthy teeth. You should explore at least the possibility of dental implant surgery if you miss one or more of your natural teeth.

Dental Implant Failure Causes

First of all, the success rate of dental implants is extremely high. About 98 percent of our cases are successfully completed. Failure of implants happens in less than 2% of our cases. Nationally, there is implant failure in only about five percent of all cases, so it is quite rare.

Common Failure Causes

Short Term Problems

Unsuccessful osseointegration

Osseointegration is the referred period where the titanium implant posts are fused to the jawbone as an essential part of a patient’s natural anatomy. If there is lack in jawbone density, this process may fail. Patients at Oral and Facial Surgery at Oklahoma must not worry about it as they will get with advanced technology here for a careful and successful implantation. If there is not enough jawbone density, we will do a bone grafting process to add bone mass.

Nerve Damage

Also, it is never because we have implant malfunction, because we tend to stop misplacing implants carefully. Certain inexperienced oral surgeons may put implants too close to nerves, but it may lead to pain or numbness and the implant needs to be removed.

Implant rejection by the body

In the vast majority of cases, titanium is not regarded as a foreign substance by the human body and thus embraces the dental implant as readily as the normal tooth root does. Implant rejection, however, is a remote possibility, if the body shows allergic reaction to titanium.

Long Term Problems

Long-term implant failure poses a whole host of problems. This can occur following the implant healing and integration into the bone and restoration of the implant. Peri-implantitis is the most common long-term failure (and also the most difficult to treat). Peri-implantitis is a persistent gum and finally the bone that protects the implant. It can be associated with the cycle of paradental disease affecting the teeth, because both result in the loss of the support structure (bone) around a fixed portion. Discomfort and pus or bleeding from the gums may be part of the symptoms.

Peri-implantitis treatments may include home-care upgrades, more regular washing, laser therapy, antibiotics and bone repair surgery. Although the overall success rate of dental implant care has been reported to be as low as 98%, the efficacy of peri-implantitis treatments is much lower, particularly when some of the associated effects such as the changed appearance of the recovery are considered.

Additional prosthetic problems such as broken screws, loosening of abutments and cracked restorations may include long-term failures. These can also be related to function loss and cosmetic improvements. Thankfully, most of these cases are simpler than peri-implantitis to fix!

You may fix an appointment with Dr. Wooten for dental implants in OKC to get it successful.

**Disclaimer: This site content is not intended to be medical advice nor establishes a doctor-patient relationship.