Dental implant progress in children and adolescents

With the rapid development of implant technology, implant restoration is a conventional treatment option for adult patients with tooth loss. Severe dental lesions, trauma, tumors, abnormal development and other reasons can cause dental defects and even dentition loss in children and adolescents. There has been hesitation to perform implant therapy for growing children because of the growth period; thus, little is known about the outcomes of the osseointegration procedure in young patients. Therefore, this article reviews the current literature to discuss the use of dental implants in children and adolescents. According to current studies, orthodontic treatment or transitional restoration should be undertaken based on the characteristics of the children and adolescents. Implant surgery should be performed after the end of the peak growth period. For patients with severe dentition defects, relevant criteria should be established before implant surgery to evaluate the effect of implant therapy in children and adolescents. The patients should be treated with a multidisciplinary, staged and long-term treatment approach. Most of the recent literature consists of case reports and short-term studies. There is an urgent need for more studies in this field with long-term follow-up.