Posted by writeradmin
Hi, I’m 16 years-old and am still dealing with baby canine teeth. Last year, I took out my bottom ones and had these empty spots because my adult teeth came too far back and almost behind the lateral incisors. Because of that I am scared to remove the upper ones. I don’t want to look like a hillbilly by senior year of high school. Is there anything I can do, like maybe dental implants, to prevent this?
Emma
Dear Emma,
I am so sorry this happened to you. I wish your dentist would have been proactive in taking care of this for you. Dentists are actually trained in how to handle this and yours should have.
How you approach this will depend on a few things. First, do you have adult teeth underneath the baby teeth, the way you did on the upper arch? If you do, dental implants will not work because you’ll have tooth roots there. What dental implants do is replace missing tooth roots. Instead you will need to have an orthodontist to help them erupt into their proper place.
There are cases where someone does not have adult teeth underneath their baby teeth. These are called congenitally missing teeth. If that is the case, then what you need is to extract the baby teeth and then replace them. While dental implants are the best permanent replacement, you will have to wait until your jaw is completely developed. That won’t be until you’ve finished high school. That does not mean that you have to have gaps in your teeth and feel like a hillbilly.
There are temporary tooth replacements that will fill in those gaps and give you a uniform smile. Don’t get anything expensive because it is temporary. Instead, I recommend you get a dental flipper. This is an inexpensive temporary tooth replacement that will serve you well until your jaw is ready for a dental implant.
If you do end up getting dental implants, an important decision is who does your dental implant procedure. This is one of the most advanced procedures in dentistry and there are countless dental implant horror stories that reflect that. Unfortunately, this is not adequately taught in dental schools. You will need a dentist who invested in significant post-doctoral training in the dental implant procedure. The easiest way to do this is to look for a dentist who is a fellow with the International Congress of Oral Implantologists (ICOI).
Your first step is to see a dentist and have some x-rays done to see if there are adult teeth behind those and, if so, where they are.
This blog is brought to you by Lafayette, LA Dentist Dr. John Theriot.