Few studies focus on the dental status of very old patients, i. e. above age 80. However, some clinical surveys show a significant decrease in the prevalence of edentulism in older age cohorts. It is already a rare condition in high-income households in the US today (Slade et al. 2014). Edentulism is projected to fall to 2.6% by 2050 and will probably be seen mostly in the older, economically deprived population. There is no doubt that this trend can be observed in most of the western world. In Germany and Switzerland, the preventive measures that were launched in the early 1960s are now paying off in the elderly generation. The rate of edentulism in the 65 to 74 age cohort dropped from 24.9% in 1997/2000 to 12.4% in 2014. In this cohort in Germany, the mean number of teeth was 19.9 and 83.8% of the missing teeth were replaced, either with removable partial dental prostheses (RPDP: 33%), fixed partial dental prostheses (FPDP: 36.6%), or a combination (14.1%). The prevalence of dental implants increased from 2.6% in 1997/2000 to 8.1% in 2014. However, this representative study (Deutsche Mundgesundheitsstudie) still found 32.8% edentulous patients in the oldest age cohort of 75-to-100-year-olds (Micheelis & Schiffner 2006, Jordan & Micheelis 2016). In Switzerland, oral health showed an even greater improvement over time. In the last representative survey, edentulism affected only 6.5% of the 65-to-74-year-old cohort and 15.1% of the >85 cohort. However, almost 100% of those in the latter age group had some kind of fixed or removable dental prosthesis (Schneider et al. 2017). Finally, prevalence of edentulism ranged 0-54.7% in the 65-74 cohort globally and 2.7-27.6% in Europe and Israel (Stock et al. 2016).
It can thus be observed that edentulous patients are becoming older and hence more complex to manage. The overwhelming indications for dental implants, however, are nowadays single tooth replacements with implant-supported single crowns (SC), or extended edentulous spaces with implant-supported FPDPs, even in the oldest patients (Schimmel et al. 2017a). Today, there is consensus that age is no contraindication for implant therapy, as shown in a recent systematic review demonstrating very high survival rates in patients above the age of 75 years that were similar to those of younger patients (Schimmel et al. 2018).