Many patients are surprised to hear that implants can fail. Some implant providers promise patients that implants can last forever–but this is not realistic. Nothing lasts forever, and complications and failures for dental implants can generally be divided into 3 stages:
- Initial (early) failure (0-8 weeks)
- Symptoms:
- Failure is usually very obvious – the implant falls out or has pus around it
- Typically either very painful, or not painful at all
- Causes:
- Poor patient healing (uncontrolled diabetes, immunocompromised)
- Poor blood flow to area (very dense bone)
- Low implant stability in bone
- Implant placed in infection that was not properly removed and cleaned
- Symptoms:
- Mid stage failure (8 weeks – 1 year)
- Symptoms:
- Typically painless
- Implant gets loose, pus around implant
- Causes:
- Poor patient healing due to health/immune issues like uncontrolled diabetes
- Early overload of implant due to chewing/biting forces
- Gum infection around implant leading to rapid bone loss around implant
- Fibrous encapsulation of implant
- Symptoms:
- Late stage failure (1 year +)
- Symptoms:
- Typically painless
- Implant slowly loses bone until it becomes infected or falls out
- Causes:
- Bone loss due to ill fitting crown/restoration
- Slow bone loss due to periodontal disease/poor oral hygiene
- Implant failure due to breakage from ill fitting crown/restoration
- Symptoms:
As you can see from this list, once the implant is healed there are limited ways that an implant can fail, and long term failures are typically heavily influenced by how good of a job the dentist did that placed the implant, and whether high quality parts were used in a proper fashion. Short term failures are typically less influenced by the dentist placing the implant, as during the short term there is heavy reliance on good healing ability from the patient in order for the implant to take and fuse to the bone.