According to a report I recently tripped over from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 25% of all adults that are 60 years and older have lost all of their teeth. The report was actually from the early 2000s, so I was shocked at the thought that with a massively aging Baby Boomer population, this number is destined to continue to climb!
I also read another report that stated there are approximately 32 million people in the United States that currently wear Dentures. The reason that these people wear Dentures varies from case to case, with reasons ranging from poor oral health care, trauma, and weak teeth.
This got me thinking about just how many people are living with Dentures today! And although Dentures are an amazing way for the edentulous (people missing teeth) population to “get their teeth back”, and live a more normal life that includes the ability to smile, laugh, and eat more normally, these same dentures are not permanent solution that stays in someone’s mouth like their old teeth used to. So those that have Dentures, have to accept the fact that their teeth are transient in the sense that they will have to come out for cleaning…and this is a daily reminder that they do not have teeth.
There is another way!
Did you know that there is an alternative to Dentures that offers the edentulous the opportunity to both re-gain their teeth AND have them permanently placed in their mouth?
These are called Implant Assisted Dentures, and they are an amazing solution for people that are missing teeth, and that desire to have a more permanent solution when it comes to regaining their ability to smile, chew, laugh, and do all those other things that people with a healthy set of teeth get to do!
The magic is in the Implant
If you’ve read any of my other Blog posts, then you are probably familiar with Dental Implants, Quite simply, they are a way for a patient to have a prosthetic “root” placed in their mouth. Often these “roots” (actually called Posts) are placed to support an individual tooth -or Crown- in an individual that is missing a tooth. But this same technology can be implemented to be able to support a whole ROW of teeth, which is your denture! An example of this for you to envision might be a person that is missing all of their top teeth. We can go into this patient’s mouth and strategically place 4 implant posts evenly spread out around where these top teeth used to be, and then once these posts have healed, we can literally “snap” Dentures onto these posts for a semi-permanent application!
The result for the patient is a set of Dentures that do not have to be removed from their mouth daily for cleaning, which means that patient gets to live a more normal life…one where they can forget they even have these Dentures!!!
For more information about how Implant assisted Dentures can help you or a loved one of yours, please reach out to us here at Mount Vista Family Dental in Salmon Creek so that we can schedule a consultation to see if these Implant assisted Dentures are a good solution for you!