An interview with...

I treat lots of female patients who have experienced total tooth loss. Many of them recall visits to the Dentist many years ago to have multiple teeth extracted or a complete clearance of their natural teeth. Many continue to wear visually poor dentures that do not correctly support the facial muscles and as a result they have sunken in features which age the patient.

If patients wear the same set of teeth for too many years the teeth wear down, the jaw postures forward and the face looks closed down which makes people look much older too.

Also the denture teeth are too small for the mouth and set unnaturally with little thought to the patients gender and personality. To make a female patient look younger the patients facial profile needs be improved from within using complete dentures made to the correct facial height and with the teeth positioned to enhance femininity and blend perfectly with facial features supporting the cheeks and lips. The cheeks and lips will look fuller and the face looks younger as a consequence.

The incisal edges of the teeth should show when the patient is at rest and when the patient smiles the upper teeth should follow the curvature of the lower lip.

Yes this can be true, depending on the individual case. Clasps are small metal arms that are often used to retain partial dentures.

Clasping a patients back teeth generally isn't an issue for partial denture wearers especially if the clasps are not in view when the patient smiles. Understandably patients who have lost their back teeth don't like to show clasping mechanisms around their front teeth. One choice are flexible tooth coloured clasps which aren't so obvious.

Precision attachments can also be used to retain partial dentures. If a patient already has crowns in the front of their mouth these can be replaced with new restorations which form part of the precision attachment mechanism, with a secondary component that clips onto the crown placed within the partial denture. Partial denture patients without crowns may choose to replace a natural tooth with a crown and precision attachment to avoid showing clasps but the enamel structure of the natural tooth needs to be sacrificed to achieve this.

As a Clinical Dental Technician I can offer such a solution but a patient would need to see a Dentist first and the mouth prepared so I could work to the Dentists prescription.

Dental implants are often placed in patients mouths and their existing dentures attached at a later date. Ideally the possibility of having dental implants would have been discussed and the dentures designed to accommodate implant components at a later date. Depending on the attachment system used, the dentures may have to be replaced as space may be an issue.

Many Clinical Dental Technicians are now working with Implant Dentists across the UK offering just such a service. For example, a system called All-on-four from Nobel Biocare fixes the patients existing dentures into place in the same day as implant placement so the dentures become a fixed bridge.