I am only 60 years old, but have been wearing dentures for 21 years. Lately, I cannot keep them in my mouth. Even using those gross adhesives doesn’t work anymore. Is there anything I can do about this?
Doris
Dear Doris,
The results of facial collapse
What you are dealing with is called facial collapse. I don’t know if your dentist warned you about this when you first decided on dentures. Hopefully, he or she did. When your teeth were removed, your body recognized you no longer have any teeth roots. In an effort to be as efficient as possible with your body’s resources, it begins to resorb the minerals in your jawbone that were used to help hold those roots in place. This way it can use them in other places in your body that the minerals can be used. The unfortunate side-effect to this is your jawbone begins to shrink. The number of years you have been wearing dentures means you do not have enough of a jawbone left to retain your dentures.
The Solution to Facial Collapse
Implant Supported Dentures
Step one in fixing this means building back up that jawbone. You can do this with a bone grafting procedure. Once that is completed, you have two choices. First, you can get new dentures. Bear in mind, if you choose this option the whole cycle of facial collapse will begin again. A second option is to get implant supported dentures. What this does is place between four and eight dental implants in your jawbone, depending on your budget and other factors. Once the bone has had time to integrate with the implant fixtures, your denture will be anchored to them.
Because the implants serve as prosthetic tooth roots, your body interprets them as teeth. It will leave those minerals in place in order to support those root fixtures and you will not have to deal wtih facial collapse again.
This blog iis brought to you by Marietta Dentist, Dr. Cristi Cheek.