I have been in dentures for over twenty years. They’re ugly. They look like dentures. Is it too late for me to get dental implants and have a pretty smile?
Madeline
Dear Madeline,
The great news is you can have a stunning smile even after years in dentures. In truth, your dentist could have created a beautiful smile for you when you first received your dentures. It’s likely he was not interested in the aesthetics of dentistry and just cared about function over form. I wish he knew you could have both. Though, it does take some cosmetic training and an artistic eye.
Because of the number of years you have been without teeth, you have probably found it is getting much more difficult to keep your dentures in place. This is because facial collapse has set in. This is a byproduct of long-term denture use. When your teeth were removed, your body recognized that. In an effort to be as efficient as possible with its resources it began to resorb the mineral in your jawbone to use elsewhere in areas it perceived to have a greater need. Eventually, your dentures won’t stay in at all.
The solution to that is dental implants.
Getting Dental Implants after Years of Dentures
The first order of business will be to replace the bone structure you’ve lost. You can do that with a procedure called bone grafting. This alone will make you look years younger. As you can see from the picture above, losing the minerals in your jaw bone causes your jaw to collapse in a bit, giving you an aged appearance. Building that bone up again fixes that problem.
Once you are healed from the bone grating you can move forward with your dental implant procedure. The implants serve as tooth roots, causing your body to recognize the jawbone is still necessary keeping it safe from resorption.
It is too expensive to replace each previous tooth with a single dental implant, unless you are quite wealthy. Instead, I recommend implant overdentures. This uses four to six dental implants in your jaw and then anchors your new (beautiful) dentures to them.
How to Get Beautiful Dentures
I’m going to recommend you check the smile galleries of any dentist you are considering to do your procedure. It’s important you see what type of results they get. If you’re blown away with how beautiful they are you may have found your dentist. As a precaution, call the office to make sure the photos are the dentist’s actual work and not stock photos.
This blog is brought to you by San Antonio Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Imam.