Missing teeth can take a serious toll on quality of your life by compromising your appearance and making eating and speaking a challenge. Dentures are custom-made removable replacements for several missing teeth or an entire dental arch, restoring the function and appearance of your smile.
1. Partial Dentures
Partial dentures are the best solution for replacing few of your missing teeth. Conventional Partial Denture consists of resin denture base replacing the lost soft tissues and acrylic or zirconia teeth attached to the resin. Cast Partial Denture consists of metal framework which typically secures the resin base and attached teeth. Resin denture fabrication is comparatively quicker and economical option than Cast partial dentures. Cast partial dentures are sturdier that resin dentures.
2. Complete Denture
Complete denture replaces all missing teeth and portion of lost soft tissues. Healing of gums may take couple of months after complete teeth extraction. During this healing time, you are without teeth.
Immediate Denture
When patients don’t want to be without teeth, we take measurements and keep immediate dentures ready prior extraction appointment. An immediate full denture is inserted immediately after the remaining teeth are removed. Immediate dentures offer the benefit of never having to be without your teeth. The underlying bone supporting the teeth reshapes as it heals, causing the immediate denture to become loose. Immediate denture needs to be relined after being inserted to improve the fit of dentures over a period of time.
What Types Of Dentures Are Right For You?
The selection of type of denture depends on functional performance, removability, longevity, psychosocial benefits, post-insertion complaints, technical and financial concerns. Through dental and medical history, clinical examination and radiographic analysis helps in deciding the appropriate type of denture which will suite your dental needs.
Advantages Of Dentures
- 1) Dentures Make It Easier to Eat, Speak and Smile.
- 2) Makes you look younger: Designed to look like natural teeth, dentures can be customized to complement your face and improve the appearance of sunken cheeks and puckered lips.
- 3) Enhance your quality of life: Dentures can renew your ability to eat comfortably, enunciate clearly, and chew properly. With a fully functional smile, you can enjoy life more completely.
- 4) Benefit of the stability from Implants: You can opt for implant supported dentures. This solution keeps your dentures firmly supported in one place and also prevents the jawbone recession following tooth loss.
- 5) Dentures restores your smile: Dentures can make a big difference in your appearance. Replacing decayed, damaged, or missing teeth with dentures can create a dramatic change in your appearance. In addition, dentures can provide support for your facial tissues, which can give your features a healthier and more youthful look.
How Long Before I Get Used To My Dentures?
New dentures may feel awkward or uncomfortable for the first few weeks or even months. Eating and speaking with dentures might take a little practice. A bulky or loose feeling is not uncommon, while the muscles of your cheeks and tongue learn to hold your dentures in place. Excessive salivation, a feeling that the tongue does not have adequate room, and minor irritation or soreness are also common and it needs minor adjustments.
How Long Do Dentures Last?
Over a period of time, your denture will need to be relined, remade or rebased due to normal wear. Rebasing means making a new base while keeping the existing denture teeth. Also, as you age, underlying gums and jawbone shrinks. This causes your dentures to loosen, making chewing difficult and irritating your gums. You need a regular follow up check-up every six months.
How To Take Care Of Denture:
- • Dentures are delicate and may break if dropped. When washing your dentures, stand close to wash basin.
- • Don’t let your dentures dry out. Place them in a denture cleanser soaking solution or in plain water when you’re not wearing them. Never use hot water, which can cause them to warp.
- • Brushing your dentures daily will remove food deposits and plaque, and help prevent them from becoming stained. An ultrasonic cleaner may be used to care for your dentures, but it does not replace a thorough daily brushing.
- • Brush your gums, tongue and palate every morning with a soft-bristled brush before you insert your dentures. This stimulates circulation in your tissues and helps remove plaque.
Denture Repair
Many times, even dentures require repair. The material they’re made from can erode or fatigue. A denture fracture isn’t uncommon, especially for an appliance that has been in function for some time. The longer a denture is worn, the more likely it will require a denture repair.
Common Fractures And Breakages
Poor fit is the most common cause of denture fracture. As you chew and bite with your denture, you apply a force that causes micro fractures in the denture material. If the upper and lower set don’t align evenly, you risk putting too much pressure on one area. Eventually a large crack develops which needs to be fixed.
Impact fractures are caused by dropping the denture. This can break the denture at any point in the appliance, such as the teeth or even the pink region representing your gumline. The metal clasps of the partial denture can also suffer damage, and should not be put back in your mouth afterward. Luckily, dentures are made from materials allowing for denture repair.
How Time Factors In
Worn and thin dentures are very prone to breaking. Remember that dentures with an uneven bite can put excessive stress on the denture or partial in a particular site, causing them to break at that one spot. But it isn’t just a bad fit that does this; worn teeth on the denture can lead to the poor distribution of your chewing forces. Over time, this can ruin an otherwise perfect fit, making it harmful to the denture as well as your own gums and bone in the oral cavity.
Approaches To Denture Repair
Relining or revitalizing the denture is part of the denture repair. Because the gums and bone under a denture or partial can change with time, they continue to shrink until the fit of the denture needs to be. We can add back material to improve the fit. This is called relining or basing the denture or partial, and it can be done right in our clinic assuming large change isn’t required. If it does call for more work, your denture will be sent to a dental laboratory. Regardless of what it needs, it is important that the product is evaluated by us if it requires relining.
Dentures and partials are mainly made of acrylic resin. It is durable, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing and, best of all, repairable. More acrylic can be easily added to the denture for reinforcing. It’ll also bond to the fractured or broken area of the denture.
How You Can Help
When handling your dentures, don’t assume you’ll always have a firm grip; dentures can slip out of your hands quite easily. Avoid dropping the denture in the sink, or have a towel underneath it when cleaning it. Check it periodically for wear and fatigue to ensure its fit doesn’t worsen without you realizing it.