How long do dental implants last?

Ask this question in a dental practice and you will usually be told “twenty years, maybe a lifetime”. That is not dishonest, but it answers a different question than the one being asked.

There are two components. The implant is a titanium screw in bone. The crown or bridge is a piece of ceramic in a mouth. They fail for entirely different reasons, and it is worth separating them.

How long do dental implants last? What the figures say

The best long-term data puts implant survival at around 95% at ten years and somewhere near 90% at fifteen. Those are survival figures, meaning the implant is still in the jaw and doing its job.

Two caveats sit underneath them. Most of the published studies come from specialist centres treating selected patients, so real-world figures across all practices are somewhat lower. And “survival” is not the same as “trouble-free”: a proportion of surviving implants have lost bone around them and are being managed rather than thriving.

For the crown or bridge on top, expect ten to fifteen years from a ceramic crown, and rather less if you grind your teeth. Screws loosen, porcelain chips, and the shade of your natural teeth changes over decades while the crown’s does not. Replacing a crown on a sound implant is routine and considerably cheaper than the original treatment.

When implants fail, and why

Failure clusters at two points, and the causes are quite different.

Early failure, within the first few months, means the bone did not grow onto the implant. It is uncommon — one or two in a hundred — and the usual contributors are smoking, poor bone quality, overheating the bone during placement, or loading the implant too soon. When it happens, the implant is removed, the site is grafted, and it is generally replaced successfully six months later.

Late failure, years in, is nearly always peri-implantitis: inflammation that destroys the bone around a fixture that had been working perfectly well. This is the one worth understanding, because it is the one you have influence over.

Peri-implantitis, in plain terms

Gum disease around an implant behaves worse than gum disease around a tooth.

A natural tooth is attached to bone by a ligament with a rich blood supply and fibres running in several directions, which acts as a barrier. An implant is fused directly to bone with no ligament, the fibres around it run in one direction rather than a mesh, and the blood supply is poorer. Bacteria that would cause slow, symptomatic problems around a tooth cause faster, quieter problems around an implant.

The estimates vary, but something in the region of one in five implants shows some degree of peri-implant bone loss at ten years. It is usually painless until it is advanced, which is exactly why six-monthly measurement matters more than how the implant feels.

The three things that shorten an implant’s life

Smoking. Failure rates roughly double. This is not a moral point; it is a vascular one, and it applies most sharply to healing in the first weeks and to grafted sites.

Not cleaning around it. An interdental brush around each implant every day, and a hygienist every six months who measures rather than just polishes. This is the whole of the maintenance and it is not onerous.

Grinding. Night-time clenching applies forces an implant has no ligament to cushion. It shows up as loosened screws and chipped ceramic long before it threatens the implant itself. A night guard costs a fraction of a crown.

Two further factors matter and are not within your control: how much bone there was to begin with, and how well the implant was positioned. Both are settled before the surgery starts, on the scan.

What “a lifetime” ought to mean

If you have an implant placed at sixty and maintain it, the realistic expectation is that it outlives you, with a crown replaced once along the way. If you have one placed at thirty, plan on the crown being replaced two or three times over your life, and on a small but real chance of the implant needing attention in your seventies.

That is a good deal better than the alternatives. A conventional bridge has a median life of around ten to fifteen years, and when it fails it often takes one of the supporting teeth with it. A partial denture accelerates the loss of the ridge underneath it.

What we do about it here

Every treatment plan includes two reviews in the first year and six-monthly hygiene appointments with Aoife, who sees implant patients specifically. At each one, the depth around every implant is measured and recorded, so that a change of one millimetre is visible as a change rather than as a feeling.

The guarantee — five years on the implant, two on the crown — is conditional on attending those appointments. That condition is the mechanism, not the small print: an implant that is monitored is an implant where problems get caught while they are still reversible.

If you want the numbers for your own situation, they come from a scan rather than from an article. The consultation is £95 and includes one.