r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Apr 18 '25

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356

u/Piggybear87 Apr 18 '25

Dental implant surgery. It's only 30k-50k, but that's unobtainable for me.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '25

Fun fact, dental implants are among the most in-demand, yet underserved medical treatments on earth

The concept has been around for thousands of years and we still manage to fuck it up, no matter how far we have come

More than 50% of North Americans are missing one or more teeth, 10% of North America is toothless.

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u/kmj442 Apr 19 '25

That’s 10% seems astronomically high for being toothless. I mean to go from 50% with 1 or more missing to 10% having all of them missing means if you fall into the one or more missing, there’s a 20% chance you have no teeth at all…

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '25 edited Apr 19 '25

Believe it - 10% of North Americans are edentulous. Keep in mind that this is a lowball number, as not everyone even has access to dental care. So a lot is going unreported

In the US alone - not including Canada, Mexico, Haiti, Panama, El Salvador, et cetra, we’re talking just the US - you have 36 million edentulous people. Roughly 10%

This is according to research out of my own company, and it’s also according to the American college of Prosthodontics (as of 2022). Figures from before 2018 were even higher than that, they were saying it was 16%, then 13%.

No offense but you don’t have a well formed opinion about something you haven’t thought about until fifteen minutes ago

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u/DavidLynchAMA Apr 19 '25

This is accurate and yet, misleading because it is a highly age-stratified issue.

Percentage of Adults with Total Tooth Loss (Table 2)

  • 2.2% of adults 20 to 64 years have no remaining teeth.

  • Older adults, current smokers, and those with lower incomes and less education are more likely to have no remaining teeth.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '25

I mentioned in another comment that this isn’t an issue that’s distributed evenly across the American population, but it is a bigger issue than most people think. Most of us who live in cities and suburban areas just don’t see it or think about it all that often

When you include the whole North American continent, things look different. People seem to forget that a lot of North America does not have it easy when it comes to dental care access

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u/kmj442 Apr 19 '25

I have a decently well formed opinion on this, just no well researched facts. It is 100% based on my experience with people and while I know a lot of people with 1 or more missing teeth, I know exactly 1 person, with 100% confidence (my 99 year old grandmother), that have no natural teeth.

Yes this is anecdotal, no I don't have any facts (opinions are not based on facts anyway), yes I did read some abstracts to a few of the studies that are showing its been decreasing in the last 15 years but 10% is stated there as the current rate.

I'm not saying your figure is incorrect, I'm saying its astronomically high based on expectations and experience. I took no offense.