Enjoy a Varied Diet Again With Dentures

I'm constantly amazed how many people I see that have ill-fitting and poor dentures. Dentures are an excellent method to improve aesthetics also, including more things than just the smile: the profile of your face. When we make dentures for people, we ask them to bring a high school photo or a wedding photo so we can see what your teeth used to look like and try to duplicate that.

When everybody thinks about dentures, they're... Normally think about aesthetics. Most people, when they think about dentures, think about aesthetics, but it's also important to chew, mastication. In order to be healthy, you need to chew the food before it goes down. If you can't do that, it affects your whole health picture. If you're exploring your options and then thinking about dentures, come to VB&K, and we can help you make that decision an informed decision.

Dentists try to help people keep their teeth for a lifetime. Many people, though, with periodontal disease and several broken, fractured teeth, cannot financially afford to repair each tooth with a root canal and a crown if they've got 20 teeth. There are other options, which are removable dentures. And there's complete dentures where all your teeth are gone, and then there are partial dentures that attach to your teeth where you still have some of your own teeth. We do both of those procedures. As a matter of fact, when someone needs a partial denture, we build them with the thought that maybe some of these anchor teeth may end up being lost in the future, so we build a partial denture that can be added onto. Sometimes partial dentures become complete dentures. One of the things we do are immediate dentures. Immediate dentures mean the teeth are extracted, the denture is immediately put in your mouth. The reason we do that is so you're not running around without teeth for any period of time. Really, I find that immediate dentures help you heal because they cover the wounds. When you extract someone's teeth and deliver a denture the same day, when you put it in their mouth, of course, they're numb. We always have a 24-hour post-op and we come the very next day. When they come the very next day, we take it out of their mouth—I’ll be the very first one to take it out of their mouth, and then we'll start the second half of this treatment, which is you getting used to this denture. You always have to consider dentures as an option for some people because they simply can't afford to buy root canals and crowns for every single tooth, but we do everything we can to help them keep their teeth as long as they possibly can.