Making dentures
Making complete dentures, whether top or bottom, consists of several steps which must be followed with great care and precision; this is because they must perfectly adapt to your gums. Often our gums will have lost a great deal of their plumpness as the result of old extractions, meaning a loss of bone height and width, making it difficult for the denture to adhere to the remaining surface.
Making dentures involves the following stages:
We take several impressions or moulds giving a precise reflection of the position of your gums, tongue, lips and cheeks.
The laboratory produces trays adapted to your gums and filled with wax. You will then bite into this wax, helping us to make a decision in regard to the required tooth shape and height.
We will also decide on their shade, comparing them to the shade of the natural teeth around them. If the denture is for both your top and the bottom teeth, we can choose the shade you prefer, making sure that it gives a natural appearance.
By the following appointment, your teeth will have been mounted onto the test tray, although still provisionally, so that we can check to ensure that the shape, colour and position of the teeth is as desired, whether they meet your expectations and whether something can be done to meet them if not.
Finally, once the new denture has been completed, we will tell you how to keep it clean and in good condition.
Remember that your appearance won’t be the same as it was previously, no matter whether this is your first set of new dentures or whether they are replacing others that didn’t fit properly. Although your appearance will always be aesthetically improved, it will take you a few days to get used to your new facial expression, as well as to the way you chew and speak.
Complete removable dentures can replace all of your top or bottom teeth and can be put in or taken out as you wish.
Follow-up
When wearing a complete set of dentures for the first time, you usually require a period of adaptation, particularly when it comes to eating. You should start with a rather soft diet, eating food such as pasta, vegetables, pulses and fish. You can start adding food that requires more chewing after a few days.
Sometimes your dentures will require a little filing over the two or three weeks after starting to use them in order to adapt them to the changes of your moving mouth and until you feel truly comfortable with them.
With time, you may find that the bones or gums of your top or bottom jaw lose depth, causing your dentures to move. This can be rectified by filing or filling the dentures to cover the space left between your dentures and your gums.
The possibility of implants
Complete removable top dentures almost always fit snugly and comfortably. On the one hand, the palate with its concave shape and, on the other, the lips and the cheeks applying inward pressure to the dentures with a suction motion hold your top dentures firmly in place. In bottom teeth, however, anatomical conditions make it more difficult to guarantee stability. Here your tongue will push the denture upwards and outwards, sometimes making chewing more difficult. In cases such as these, fitting implants providing different kinds of fasteners for your dentures will solve the problem.
You will need at least two implants to hold the denture in place; the more implants you have, the greater the denture stability will be.
Implants are recommended when you have either very flat gums or problems salivating, in which case the moving denture will cause discomfort. If you have any doubts, we will advise you on the system best suited to your circumstances.
