The Advantages of Implant-Supported Dentures Over Regular Dentures
Feb 20, 2023
Dental implants are the most effective, natural, and health-preserving option when you must replace one or more missing teeth. However, dental implants aren’t always covered by your insurance, so they may be out of your budget. You may also lack sufficient jawbone to be a good candidate for implants.
Just because a full arch of implants won’t work for you, that doesn’t mean you have to resign yourself to regular, removable dentures. Implant-supported dentures bring you the cost savings of removable dentures while providing many of the benefits that implants provide.
At AB Dental and Oral Surgery in San Antonio, Texas, our expert dentist, Anthony D. Osei, DDS, PhD, helps you decide the best way to replace your missing teeth. If you think dentures might work best with your budget, you might consider implant-supported dentures instead. Here’s why.
If you opt for dental implants alone, you may face a long surgical process of gradually replacing your missing teeth. If you need a bone graft, you may even have to wait months before your first implant placement.
With implant-supported dentures, you don’t need a bone graft. We simply place four dental implants in each arch that needs tooth replacement. We then affix your custom-made dentures to the implants on the same day. No bone grafts are necessary.
One of the drawbacks of regular dentures is that they don’t fit perfectly over your gums. You may need to use adhesives to keep the seal tight. And yet, if you bite an apple or chew gum, your dentures could slide out of place. Dentures that don’t stay put also interfere with how you speak and how your voice sounds.
Implant-supported dentures stay put. They snap onto your dental implants for a snug fit that looks and feels natural. You can eat most of the foods you love without worrying about your teeth.
You and your dentist choose between two types of implant-supported dentures: fixed or removable. If you have a strong jawbone, you may opt for the removable dentures. That way, you can snap them out each night for cleaning, then snap them back in.
If we advise fixed implant-supported dentures, you won’t be able to take your dentures out yourself for cleaning. Instead, you brush your dentures as you would your natural teeth, and then use special tools to clean the slight space between your gums and dentures. At your biannual dental exams, we remove the dentures for a professional cleaning.
One major advantage of dental implants is that they create a healthy type of stress in your jawbone when you chew food. That stress encourages your jawbone tissue to produce new bone cells, which keeps your jawbone strong.
When you have regular dentures, your jawbone no longer receives that healthy pressure. Gradually, the bone cells in your jawbone die and aren’t replaced by new ones. That’s why many people who wear dentures have a shorter-than-normal lower face; their jaw has actually atrophied.
With implant-supported dentures, your jawbone continues to get some healthy stress. Even though you won’t have as much bone growth as you would with a full arch of implants, the four implants we place do provide some healthy stress to keep your bone producing new cells.
When surveyed, 95% of implant-supported denture patients were happy with the new teeth. And that happiness lasts for years and years. So do their dentures. In fact, 98% of implant-supported dentures were still holding fast after 7.5 years.
If you’re ready for dentures, find out how implant-supported dentures can make your teeth replacement as painless, easy, and budget friendly as possible. Contact our team by phone or use our online form today.