As we get older, we tend to cling to solutions, possessions, and products that we’re comfortable with and know will work. Perhaps you’re still driving the same car from 15 years ago or haven’t thrown away that old sweatshirt from your college days. These things are familiar and comforting, and they just work for you, so why would you get rid of them? In the case of your full dentures, however, there are many reasons to upgrade to a set of implant dentures. Not only do implant dentures offer a significant quality-of-life boost, but they also provide many oral health benefits that old-school dentures simply can’t match.
Understanding Full Dentures
Full dentures are a set of replacement teeth for those who have lost their natural ones to trauma, gum disease, decay, or other factors. They are customized to fit your mouth and allow you to eat, talk, and smile with renewed confidence.
Full dentures may also be needed even if you haven’t lost all your teeth yet. Sometimes, we need to extract teeth due to advanced gum disease, severe tooth decay, genetic disorders, or significant injury. After a full extraction, it can take your jaw several months to recover. As a temporary solution, you’ll receive a pair of immediate dentures, ensuring you’re never without teeth, even as you wait for your gums and jaw to heal.
To accelerate your recovery, we offer platelet-rich fibrin injections, which leverage your body’s natural healing capabilities. This innovative therapy introduces essential nutrients to the treatment site that support healing and protect the empty sockets from infection. PRF also promotes new bone growth and helps prevent bone loss, ensuring your jaw stays healthy and strong.
Why Opt for Full Dentures?
- Improved functionality: Tooth loss makes daily activities like eating and speaking much more difficult. By giving you new teeth, full dentures help you to eat a greater variety of foods. They also help improve speech, ensuring you communicate more clearly.
- Enhanced aesthetics: It’s hard to hide gaps in your smile. If you don’t like how your teeth look, taking photos, meeting new people, and other social situations can cause anxiety. Dentures can restore your self-confidence by providing you with a new set of teeth.
- Most affordable: From a financial standpoint, traditional full dentures are a budget-friendly option for complete tooth replacement.
The Problems With Full Dentures
While full dentures give you new teeth, they don’t replace your missing tooth roots. This leads to two issues. First, your jawbone relies on the tooth roots for stimulation when you bite and chew. Without the roots, the bone deteriorates. Over time, your jaw and gums will change shape, causing your face to sag. Second, these changes to your gums and jaw mean that your dentures will eventually lose their fit and begin to move around inside your mouth. Eating, speaking, and feeling comfortable in public become much more challenging when your teeth shift unexpectedly.
If you’re already experiencing these issues with your dental prosthetic, one solution can address both problems: securing your loose denture with dental implants—specifically, mini dental implants.
Mini Dental Implants: A Denture Upgrade
Mini dental implants are small titanium posts that we carefully place in your jawbone. They provide a stable base for attaching new teeth, such as crowns, bridges, and various implant denture options. Their direct connection to your jawbone means that any denture attached to them won’t move around. Say goodbye to floating dentures! Because the implant also replaces your missing tooth roots, it stimulates the jawbone, preventing the loss of bone and tissue.
Aside from solving the issues with traditional dentures, Dr. Brockley and Dr. Gildersleeve often prefer mini dental implants over conventional implants because of their simple and fast placement and quicker healing process. The placement technique for these implants is minimally invasive, so it doesn’t require any incisions or stitches. It’s much gentler and more efficient than conventional dental implant placement. In fact, we can place your mini implants in mere minutes and load them immediately with new teeth. These rapid results are typically unattainable with traditional implants.
Recovery from mini implant placement is also faster than from conventional implants, which take many months to heal. Post-procedure discomfort generally subsides within 24-48 hours, and the implants fully fuse with your jawbone in about three weeks.
Implant Denture Options
Implant-retained dentures come in both removable and more permanent varieties. We call the removable option a “snap-on denture” because it “snaps on” to 4-8 mini implants for stability. You can remove it at home like a traditional denture—though it’s much less bulky than that old prosthetic.
An even more secure and durable option is a roundhouse zirconia bridge. We cement this full-arch replacement to 6-12 mini implants for the ultimate stability and functionality. These bridges look and function like real teeth and are not removable at home. We’ll only remove the bridge during your routine visits to clean it professionally.
When you come in for your first visit, we’ll happily discuss which option will work best for you.
Explore Your Denture Options Today!
The thought of losing teeth and navigating the world of dental replacements can be daunting. But at Brockley Dental Center, our experienced and caring staff is here for you every step of the way. From full to partial dentures and more stable implant solutions, we have the tools and expertise to bring back your radiant smile. Schedule an appointment, and let’s discuss how these incredible procedures can change your life.
