Denture Does Not Fit Everybody

A lady in her 70s has bad teeth.  She wants to have all of the remaining teeth extracted and have top and bottom dentures.

It appears not to be a good plan.  First at all, her teeth are short.  There is limited space between the teeth #8 and 11 and the bottom teeth (Fig.1).  When the teeth are extracted, there will not enough space to place the dentures.  Because to have denture we need extra space the plates.

In addition, the plates are large and sit on the gums.  This patient has extra bone on the inner side of her bottom jaw (Fig.3 *).  The gums over the the extra bone is very thin and tender.  It is painful to wear the denture on the top of the extra bone.

None of us would love to have one single tooth pulled.  For this old lady, taking out 10-20 tiny tinny broken roots (Fig.2) should be very traumatic.

Instead we propose taking two teeth (#9,10), placing 3 implants (at #9,10 and 12) and having 5 crowns from #8 to #11.  This plan is less traumatic.  The patient can chew much better.  Finally this old lady agrees with the better plan.

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Xin Wei, DDS, PhD, MS 1st edition 04/08/2015, last revision 04/09/2015