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The Standard Denture
The standard denture is more or less what you’d expect in false teeth. The back of the standard denture ends just behind the hard bone in roof of the mouth and this maximizes the stability of the piece as well as retention.
If you tend to gag when inserting dentures, the back can be cut forward to make the base look more like an arch.
Keep in mind if you do customize your denture like this, it will be less stable. These types of dentures are also made for people who are already missing their natural teeth. Insertion is pretty straightforward, retention relies on suction, and stability depends on the hardness of the underlying tissues.
The benefit of these dentures is that they’re old standbys. In other words, there’s no new technology involved in making them. Almost any dentist knows how they work, how they should fit, and so there should be no surprises.
Immediate Dentures
According to Mckinley Dental Group, immediate dentures are sometimes called “temporary dentures” because they’re made before your permanent teeth are extracted. So, in a sense, they’re pre-dentures since the dentist will be casting the mold before your existing teeth come out.
The teeth are extracted, and a prefabbed denture is inserted directly over the bleeding sockets. While it sounds painful, it’s not. Since you’re numb when the teeth are extracted, and the new dentures act as a bandaid over the extracted teeth, you feel almost nothing during and after the process.
The benefit of this type of denture is that you can get your teeth extracted the same day as your dentures are installed.
The bone that supported the original teeth is still there. Only now it supports the dentures. In most cases, immediate dentures become permanent.
The disadvantage to immediate dentures is that if you have more than a couple of teeth left, then it’s impossible to do a wax try-in. Another disadvantage is that, once the natural teeth are gone, the bone supporting the old teeth diminishes rather quickly. At the end of three weeks, there is significant space between the denture and the healing gums, which leads to looseness in the dentures and sore spots that have to be corrected quickly.
About 4 to 6 months in, the immediate dentures needs to be realigned, and this is almost never included in the original cost of the dentures. Some dentists do tell you about this eventuality. Some do not.
Cu-Sil Transitionals
Cu-Sil Transitionals takes advantage of any remaining teeth you have. Rather than remove all of your permanent teeth, which can cause stability and fitment issues regardless of how well the dentures are designs, Cu-sil partials or transitionals build dentures around existing teeth and use them as “anchor points.”
This results in more stability for the denture.
Obviously, this is a huge benefit, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Cu-sil transitionals aren’t the best when you have a lot of natural, stable teeth. They are only transitional, meaning that the dentist assumes that, eventually, your remaining teeth will be lost.
Another problem with Cu-sil dentures is that you have to wait longer to get them relined. And, a lot of dentists work with local labs that can return a set of dentures no sooner than one week.
Overdentures
Overdentures are removable individual teeth that are inserted over your existing teeth, or whatever is left of them. You basically replace your teeth with false ones.
Prior to modern dentures, overdentures were what was used.
Implants
Unlike most denture options, implants are permanent teeth that are attached to the bone using a titanium screw. Actually, a titanium screw is drilled into your jaw, and once the gums have healed, the dentures are placed over the screw.
The obvious benefit of this approach is that the denture can be better retained than if you were to use standard dentures.
A minimum of two implants are usually necessary to maintain a lower denture, but more than two implants are required for upper implant-retained dentures.
One of the major downsides of using implants is that they are expensive. Usually, a dentist will charge about $2,000 for the procedure. If you don’t have dental insurance, it might be cost prohibitive.
Greg Moody, DMD completed his undergraduate work at Middle Tennessee State University in Biology/Chemistry and his dental education at the University of Louisville. He now lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska for McKinley Dental, one of the leading denture clinics in the state.
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