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What are dentures?
Dentures are appliances used to substitute missing teeth. They are removable. Patients who lose their teeth feel ashamed to smile or laugh. Dentures enable them to smile without inhibitions and without worrying about their looks.
Dentures can be used to substitute teeth lost due to periodontal disease, injury or teeth decay. It helps not only to improve the appearance of the patient but also help the patient to eat, chew and bite food, which is otherwise not possible without teeth.
What are the advantages of dentures?
People have to face many difficulties without their natural teeth. Dentures give the following advantages to the people who have lost their teeth:
- Improves the ability to chew: It helps the individual to chew their food instead of swallowing which enhances his overall health.
- Eating food of their choice: It helps the person to choose and eat food that they were not able to eat after losing their teeth.
- Improves the look: When somebody loses their teeth their and lips collapses or moves inside without the support of teeth. The lost tooth does not look aesthetically good. Dentures provide back the missing support and give a previous look back to the individual.
- Improves the speaking: Once the facial muscles collapse after losing the tooth, the lips lose support too, and the ability to speak correctly is hampered. When the missing teeth are replaced with the help of dentures, then the people can talk properly again.
- Improves the confidence: Once a person loses the tooth they become self-conscious, and their self-confidence is hampered, and they refrain from making social appearances and social conversations. Dentures improve the look and speech of the individual by replacing their missing teeth and gives a boost to their self-confidence.
- Improves digestion: It improves the overall health of the patient as food which is chewed is easily digested.
How are dentures made?
After the teeth are extracted or lost, the gum tissue needs a little time to heal and take shape. The bones get a permanent, stable shape after some time. It may take up to eight to twelve weeks. After this, the conventional dentures are made.
The process of making dentures starts by taking a series of impressions of the patient’s mouth that helps the lab technicians to make the models of the mouth that will assist in the making of the dentures. The lab technicians build the dentures slowly and transfer them into the patient’s mouth to check the fit and bite of the patient. It is also ensured that the dentures look approved by the patient. The patient has to visit the doctor once every week until the dentures are complete and ready to be delivered to the patient. After the patient starts using the dentures, he has to visit the dentist once or twice during the first month to make the adjustments.
Some dentist offer immediate dentures so that the patients do not feel embarrassed after teeth extractions. These dentures are adjusted according to the extractions, as the front teeth are extracted ahead of the back teeth. But these immediate dentures are only worn during the healing stage and do not fit as snugly as the conventional dentures. They are suitable for temporary use until the traditional braces are not made.
What are the disadvantages of complete dentures?
The main disadvantage of dentures is that it might not be very comfortable to wear initially as people are not used to placing them in the mouth. Apart from that people experience the following problems:
- The people who wear the denture for the first time may salivate a lot because the brain perceives the dentures as food. It continues for one or two days.
- The people wearing dentures for the first time can sores.
- Some patients experience gagging. It happens when the dentures are too thick or too thin or do not fit entirely. It also occurs when the patients psychologically deny the dentures.
- Sometimes the dentures create problems when the patient already has periodontal disease.
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Dr. George Smith, a Plano Dentist, is of the opinion that when patients wear the dentures for the first time, they feel uncomfortable, but they get used to it slowly. Patients learn the techniques of eating with braces with time. He suggests cutting the food into small pieces and eating from both sides as eating from one side can dislodge the dentures. Though dentures do not function correctly like natural teeth, they are a right way of replacing lost teeth.
References:
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentures
- http://www.mouthhealthy.org/en/az-topics/d/dentures
- http://georgesmithdds.com/removable-dentures/