Dentures are appliances designed to fit your mouth precisely and to match your face naturally while replacing many or all natural missing teeth. The best dentures restore both the appearance of natural teeth, the full range of dental function, and the confidence and freedom to live freely by laughing, speaking, and even singing without hesitation or anxiety. Dentures have been around for so long in one form or another, that many people feel like they know everything that there is to know about them.
Think again! At Crescent Heights Dental Clinic, we’ve gathered some of the most common recent questions asked about dentures by our patients. Here are the answers. Don’t use this as the end of your research, but use this information as the starting point to investigating whether getting dentures in Bridgeland is a good option for you.
What kinds of dentures are there?
There are two primary types of dentures with a significant option that applies to each. We’ll introduce both (and the option that applies to both) below:
Complete dentures are designed to replace all of your teeth in one or both arches. Complete dentures are typically made of plastic and composite resin bases that grip porcelain teeth and are held in place on your gums by a suction-formed seal.
Partial dentures are appropriate for patients who are missing many teeth in one or both arches, but not all teeth. Partial dentures replace the missing teeth by holding artificial porcelain teeth in a rigid plastic base or flexible material supported by your gums and/or remaining natural teeth.
Implant-supported dentures are complete or partial dentures that do not rest on your gums to be removed as required and at night, but are permanently connected to your jaw bone through dental implants embedded directly into your jaw. Implant-supported dentures are inherently more stable than removable complete and partial dentures due to the support they derive from the jaw. Having said that, getting implant-supported dentures from a dentist in Crescent Heights is a much more expensive and invasive proposition.
What are the alternatives to dentures?
The alternative to partial dentures for replacing two or more adjacent teeth is a bridge. A bridge is a restoration constructed from gold, porcelain, porcelain fused to metal, or zirconium. Traditional bridges suspend artificial teeth in the gap left behind by your missing teeth while receiving support from healthy natural teeth on either side of the gap, to which the bridge is anchored. This reliance on neighbouring natural teeth is one of the significant downsides of a bridge, particularly since the anchoring teeth need to be altered to accommodate the bridge’s support work.
Implant-supported bridges, on the other hand, do not rely on or even touch neighbouring teeth. Instead, implant-supported bridges are anchored directly into your jaw through implants that prevent bone loss and in fact stimulate the growth of healthy bone tissue.
Can you wear dentures all day?
For the first few days upon receiving dentures, you should wear them day and night. After that, though, you should remove your dentures at night because they’re unnecessary to eliminate unnecessary pressure on your gums and jaw.
Will I need to use denture adhesive?
Modern dentures stay in place via suction, not glue. Dental adhesives can increase the stability and security of dentures that are loose or becoming loose due to a poor fit or due to changes in the shape of your gums and jaw over time.
For generations, dentures have been a popular and economical solution for tooth loss. As materials science and implant-supported options continue to evolve, they remain attractive options alongside more permanent options including dental implants. To get all the information about getting dentures near you, and about all your options, contact a dentist near you for a consultation.