Who is a candidate for dental implants?

Anyone in reasonable health who wants to replace missing teeth. You must have enough bone in the area of the missing teeth to provide for the anchorage of the implants. Some people are missing all their teeth and most of those are excellent candidates for dental implants, but today, we use implants to replace small bridges, removable partial dentures and even missing single teeth.

Before an implant can be placed in your mouth, a thorough examination must carried out to determine whether there is suitable bone in the region that the implant is be placed. Sometimes the bone must be augmented by bone grafting before sufficiente is available for an implant, this is especially true for implants placed in the top jaw, where a sinus lift operation may be needed.

The radiographs below show the sinus area AFTER a sinus lift operation, you can see how the implants are placed after the bone has been augmented: