Most new patients who currently wear a full denture look at me oddly when I ask them if they’ve lost or gained a significant amount of weight over the past year to eighteen months. They usually hesitate, then ask “how did you know?” Because their denture told me. Substantial changes in weight make changes in mouth musculature and the amount of tissue lining the bone, among other structures. When someone loses weight, a denture often feels loose so the patient relies on adhering paste to hold it in place, when speaking and chewing. If not, intraoral sores form. A similar process occurs when the elderly loose body mass.
That is one of the reasons that I am such a proponent of dental implants. Attached directly to bone, they never move when soft tissues change in size or shape. They never feel loose, requiring a paste to hold them. They feel like teeth you can trust.
I have been placing dental implants for 32 years, having followed the technological advances in shape and design that allow successful placement in almost every situation today. But the actual development of modern-day implants occurred before I even graduated from dental school. According to the International Congress of Oral Implantologists, the discovery of what makes current dental implants successful was serendipitous. In 1952, an orthopedic surgeon noted that he could not remove a small titanium cylinder he had placed in a bone to study how bone healed. The special property that titanium has of fusing to bone, called “osseointegration”, is the biological basis of modern implants’ success.
I’d say that implants have a pretty great track record, wouldn’t you?
Contact Winterset Dental today to find out which treatment is right for you.