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.

The rapid absorption of labial alveolar bone after tooth extraction not only reduces the aesthetic effect of implant repair but also affects the long-term success rate of implants. The socket shield technique is reported as the latest alveolar preservation technique in the aesthetic zone from both domestic and international case reports and shows a high success rate of short - term osseointegration and excellent aesthetic effects. However, some investigations have shown short- and long-term complications with the socket shield technique, such as failure of osseointegration, loss of crestal bone and buccal bone, inflammation, etc. In this review, the socket shield technique will be reported in detail with its pros and cons. Although the socket shield technique has achieved good clinical effects and short-term success rates in many cases, there are still no conclusions regarding the surgical procedure, such as the thickness, the position of the shield, whether to put the graft material between the shield and implant, etc. Due to the lack of long-term research or a large amount of clinical literature support and technical sensitivity, the socket shield technique should be carefully used in clinical application to reduce unexpected risks.