Diabetes Makes Dental Implant Success a Challenge

For most people, dental implants are an easy solution to tooth loss. There’s no special care required: just do your normal oral hygiene routine and make your visits to your dentist to ensure your new tooth integrates properly with your jawbone and remains healthy. But for diabetics, it’s not so easy. Diabetics have to take care to ensure dental implant success, and even if they do everything right, they may only have an 85% chance of success for their dental implants, compared to 95% for non-diabetics.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and under the right circumstances, diabetics can be good candidates for dental implants.

How Diabetes Impacts Your Dental Implants

Diabetes is a systemic disease that affects virtually your entire body, including your mouth. With poorly controlled diabetes, you may experience xerostomia in which your body doesn’t produce enough saliva. Saliva doesn’t just keep your mouth from drying out and getting uncomfortable, it protects your teeth and gums from oral bacteria. With less saliva, the bacteria population can grow, increasing the risk of tooth decay and gum disease.

It’s worse than that, too. When you don’t keep your blood sugar levels under control, your saliva may contain excess glucose, which means that it will actually feed bacteria!

Just as diabetes can impact your heart health, it impacts your peripheral blood vessels, impairing circulation to many parts of your body, including your jawbone. The diminished blood supply in your jaw makes it harder for your bones to heal. It can delay healing, and may prevent your dental implants from ever getting fully integrated into your jawbone.

How to Get Successful Dental Implants with Diabetes

For a diabetic to be able to get dental implants, they have to keep their blood sugar under control. Work with your doctor to learn the most effective methods for controlling your blood sugar, and make sure to follow their instructions. You have to be absolutely committed to controlling your blood sugar, before your dental implant procedure, during recovery, and for as long as you want your implants to last. Your implant dentist will coordinate with your doctor to make sure you’re taking adequate steps for ensuring proper blood sugar control.

You also have to be committed to caring for your dental implants. Because of your risk for gum disease, we will give you detailed instructions for oral hygiene and whether you need to make additional dental visits to care for your dental implants.

Together we can give you the best possible chance of success.

If you are diabetic and want dental implants in Beverly Hills, please call (310) 275-5325 for a consultation with an implant dentist.

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