Dentures in Jasper, AL

Losing a permanent tooth can be frustrating and inconvenient, affecting your life and smile. When multiple teeth are lost, these issues worsen. However, severe tooth loss—defined by the CDC as having 8 or fewer teeth—significantly impacts your quality of life. It makes eating fruits, vegetables, and many proteins difficult, greatly affects the clarity of your speech, and alters your appearance and smile. This is a real issue for older Americans. According to the CDC, 1 in 4 adults aged 65 and up have experienced severe tooth loss, while 1 in 6 are edentulous, having lost all their teeth. Luckily, dentures are a tried-and-true solution for replacing an entire set of teeth. And today’s dental innovations have paved the way for more comfortable, secure, and natural-looking prosthetics.

While traditional dentures restore some aesthetic and functionality, they have serious drawbacks. At Bivona Family Dentistry, we’re proud to offer modern implant dentures, which are more stable, functional, and aesthetically appealing than conventional options.

Understanding Traditional Dentures

For many decades, traditional dentures have been the default method for replacing missing teeth with removable plastic prosthetics. Some patients find this removability convenient; for others, it’s an annoyance that creates the opportunity for damage, loss, and irritation.

There are two traditional denture options, depending on how many teeth you need to replace:

  1. Full dentures: This prosthetic replaces all your teeth. Its pink plastic base rests on your gums for stability. The connection between the gums and the suction effect keeps the denture in place.
  2. Partial dentures: These devices are for patients with some remaining teeth. They attach to your natural teeth via metal or plastic clasps.

The Drawbacks of Traditional Options

Conventional dentures don’t fully restore the chewing power or natural look and feel of your original teeth, but their shortcomings extend further. Namely, they don’t provide the necessary support for long-term oral health because they don’t replace the missing tooth roots. When you bite and chew, your tooth’s roots place stress on the jawbone. This stress is essential for maintaining the bone’s density and strength. Without it, the bone begins to resorb or deteriorate. As a result, your jaw function diminishes, and your overall facial structure and appearance change. These changes cause a once well-fitting denture to lose its tight grip.

Jawbone deterioration and loose-fitting dentures cause irritation, soreness, and inflammatory conditions like angular cheilitis (irritation at the corners of your mouth) and denture stomatitis (a fungal infection common among denture wearers). Additionally, the denture will begin to slide around inside your mouth, making eating, laughing, and speaking more challenging than they already were. If you’re not careful, your prosthetic can even fall out! These unexpected mishaps worsen over time, and denture relines or adhesives are only temporary solutions.

To solve these problems for good, you need something to replace the missing tooth roots and secure the denture to your jawbone.

Implant Dentures: A Modern Alternative

Dentures in Jasper, AL | Bivona Family Dentistry | Denture OptionsImplant dentures consist of replacement teeth secured by dental implants. We place the implants directly into your jawbone, acting as replacement tooth roots and a sturdy anchor point for your dentures. By using smaller, less invasive mini dental implants, we can increase stability with more implants and place them in patients who’ve already experienced jawbone loss.

There are many implant denture systems, but they all have sleeker dental prosthetics than traditional dentures. Their upgraded design allows for a more natural look and feel, reducing or eliminating the plastic base.

Implant Denture Options

  1. Snap-in dentures: These are also called implant-retained overdentures. They live up to their name by “snapping” onto implants for stability. But, like traditional dentures, they are removable for easy cleaning and maintenance. We use at least two conventional implants or four mini implants to secure the denture. This prosthetic contains pink plastic gums to provide lip support, but the gums are significantly less bulky than traditional dentures.
  2. Semi-removable roundhouse bridge: This roundhouse bridge is secured to 6 to 10 mini implants and is only removed by your dentist for professional cleaning. We tend to place 8 mini implants to retain this type of denture, which is why we often refer to this option as “Great on Eight.” The prosthesis is made from zirconia, a ceramic material that is ten times stronger than enamel, providing impressive durability and chewing function.
  3. Non-removable roundhouse bridge: Sometimes called permanent dentures, we cement this roundhouse onto 10 to 12 mini implants, meaning you never have to remove it! This option provides the highest level of stability, comfort, and functionality.

Because implant dentures are anchored to your jawbone, they fully restore the function of your natural teeth. You won’t have to worry about your dentures slipping or wobbling unexpectedly. With implant dentures, you can eat your favorite meals, speak clearly, and enjoy social situations more freely. These traditional denture alternatives are also more comfortable and don’t require constant adjustments or adhesives. This incredible dental innovation can improve your quality of life and give you peace of mind for many years to come.

Schedule Your Free Consultation Today

If you need to replace your teeth with dentures and want the best results, implant dentures are an excellent choice. Thanks to their secure connection to your jawbone, they offer stability, reliability, and comfort unmatched by traditional removable dentures.

Ready to discover which dentures are best for you? Contact Bivona Family Dentistry today to schedule a free implant consultation. Our team is excited to explore the transformative possibilities of implant dentures with you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Eating can be difficult if you wear traditional dentures. Although dentures improve your ability to bite and chew, they don’t fully restore the function you had with your natural teeth. As the dentures loosen over time, eating becomes an even more challenging task. Some people remove their dentures while eating, settling on soft foods like mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. As a result of poor denture function, many denture wearers avoid nutritional foods like raw fruits, vegetables, and proteins. This limited diet results in poorer nutrition, which can impact overall health.

Fortunately, today’s implant denture systems substantially improve your biting and chewing ability. Anchored in the jawbone, the implants distribute bite forces evenly, leveraging the bone’s strength. If you want to bite into an apple or chew steak again, we can make that a reality with implant dentures.

Typically, there’s a period of 3-6 months between extractions and getting permanent dentures. This recovery time allows the gums to heal and reshape before final dentures are made.

However, choosing dentures supported by mini dental implants simplifies the process and ensures you won’t have to be without teeth. We’ll take digital impressions of your teeth so a temporary denture can be fabricated before you come in for your procedure. On the day of your procedure, we’ll remove your teeth, place the mini implants you need, and attach the temporary denture. After a few months of healing, we’ll remove the temporary prosthesis and secure your permanent one.

In many cases, yes! When you come in, we’ll take scans of your jaw and denture to determine if we can place the implants in a way that lines up with your current prosthesis.

If you have a loose or ill-fitting denture, we can help. Stabilizing existing dentures is one of the common procedures we perform at Bivona Family Dentistry, and it allows our patients to experience a much better quality of life.

The number of implants we use to stabilize dentures depends on the type of implant denture you choose and your particular needs. In general, we’ll place more implants in the upper jaw than in the lower jaw. Why? The upper jawbone is a little softer, so using additional implants gives the denture more strength. We can also spread the bite forces along more implants, which helps preserve the bone.

Here’s how many mini dental implants we typically use to support various denture alternatives:

  • Snap-in dentures: 4-6 mini implants for the lower arch, 6-8 mini implants for the upper arch.
  • Semi-removable roundhouse bridge (“Great on Eight”): 6-10 mini implants, with 8 implants used on average.
  • Permanent roundhouse bridge: 10-12 mini dental implants.

At your free dental implant consultation, we’ll evaluate how many implants you need to support your chosen denture.