New Alternatives: What is available for teeth beyond treatment?

Review
In the two previous posts I talked about how we are living longer now than ever before and what that means for you mouth.  We are lucky to be around in a time of great advances in both Medicine and Dentistry.  We can do a great deal more to help keep your teeth than ever before.  Even with all of the available treatments there are times when teeth can not be saved or fixed.  What can be done when this happens?

Dental implants

In the recent history of Dentistry implants have become a great way to replace missing teeth.  In the past if a tooth was missing a bridge was the treatment of choice to replace the missing tooth.  There were several limitations.  First a bridge needs to connect to surrounding teeth.  This means the surrounding teeth need to be drilled on, it also means if there is no tooth behind the missing tooth a bridge is not an option.  The more teeth that were missing the lower the success was of replacing the missing teeth with a bridge.

Implants anchor into the bone so you can avoid drilling on the adjacent teeth in order to anchor to them.  An implant behaves much more like a natural tooth than any other replacement.  In the past dentist's would go to extensive measures with less and less favorable results to avoid loosing teeth because there wasn't a good alternative.  Dental implants now provide a more stable and longer term treatment to options available to Dentists in the past.

Dentures

If your dentures are looking like this we can help.

This patient was afraid a new denture would look nicer

but it might not fit as well. (see photo at end)

Dentures an alternative to no teeth not an alternative to teeth.  What I mean by this is dentures work great and feel great only if you are comparing that to not having teeth.  However with only 5% of the ability to chew as the natural teeth they are a poor replacement for having teeth.  This is a hard reality to process until you make the conversion from teeth to dentures.  Complaints commonly heard are, "The bottom dentures won't stay in.", "I can't chew steak.", "I can't chew salad."  and I have sore spots under the bottom denture."

You will notice I listed the bottom denture twice.  With less bone available to hold onto and a tongue constantly getting in the way, the bottom dentures are what people complain about most. In spite of better materials and a better understanding of how the mouth works there are just some obstacles that continue to cause problems.  An unsupported bottom denture is one of these obstacles.


Implant Denture Combinations

Implants to retain a denture

Denture with connectors

If you were unable to keep your teeth and you still want to eat steak or salad you are in luck.  There is a wide range of treatments involving a combination of implants and dentures.   Two implants placed on the bottom jaw that attach to the denture will make a big difference in the success of dentures.  There are options where even more implants are placed which add even more support to dentures.

Many people still want more even, they want to be able to replace all of their teeth and have them stay fixed in place.  I can understand their desire to have something as close to natural as possible and that would mean not having something that can be removed.  I find it amazing that we have options to anchor replacements for all of the teeth that are fixed in place.  A full functioning, fixed replacement of all the missing teeth can be achieved with 4-6 correctly placed implants on the top and 4-6 correctly placed implants on the bottom.

A Few Final Thoughts

Better that any crown, implant or denture is the natural teeth.  I see patients in my office who are in their 90's and even are over 100 and they have all of their teeth.  Keeping their teeth has greatly improved their quality of life.  If you would like to be one of those people then we can help.  If you fear you have bad teeth, there are simple treatments that can help strengthen teeth and prevent future problems no matter how bad your history has been.

There are many more ways that we can help you to get and keep a stable, healthy mouth.  With today's advances making Dentistry more comfortable, accommodating and predictable there are more reasons for you to come in and see what can be done to give you a better smile.

Final result from the previously shown worn denture.  

The dentures fit so well they are almost hard for the patient 

to take out

#dentures
#tucsondentist