Dentures
Each tooth plays a vital role in how you eat, speak, and smile. If you are missing teeth, all of those activities become more difficult and often painful. Dentures can restore your ability to talk, chew, and smile naturally again. Your League City, TX dentists at Westview Dental provide many customized restorative dentistry options, including advanced, long-lasting dentures that fit you and your lifestyle.
What are Dentures, and Who Needs Them?
Dentures are removable sets of artificial teeth designed to replace missing teeth. People most often lose teeth to periodontal disease or tooth decay, but you can also lose teeth in a traumatic injury. Dentures are custom-made to look just like your natural teeth. Dental technicians can create customized dentures from metal, porcelain, resin, nylon, or acrylic.
What Types of Dentures Are There?
There are full sets of dentures that replace the bottom and/or top rows of teeth, and there are also partial sets of dentures that can replace a few missing teeth. Here at Westview Dental in League City, TX, we can customize your dentures to fit your specific needs:
Complete Dentures
Complete dentures are appliances that replace a full arch of missing teeth, whether those are the top teeth, the bottom teeth, or both sets. Complete dentures are affixed to your gums using a special adhesive that keeps them in place all day so that you can talk and eat normally. Typically, people wearing full dentures remove them at night before bed for cleaning and rest.
Partial Dentures
Partial dentures replace sections of missing teeth. For example, if you are missing three teeth in your upper jaw, we can create a set of partial dentures to replace those teeth. Partial dentures rest on the gums, but also attach to the remaining teeth on either side for support and stability. These can also be removed at night for cleaning.
Other Types of Dentures
Our League City dentists can also design other types of dentures for patients in certain situations. For example, a set of “immediate denture” appliances can be used right after tooth extraction surgery as a temporary place-holder before final dentures are created.
Implant-retained dentures are another type of denture solution where we replace a missing tooth with an artificial tooth that screws into surgically implanted posts in your jawbone. These can also be removed at night for soaking and cleaning.
Implant-supported dentures, however, are fixed in place by your dentist, so you cannot take them out without coming into the office. They are a stable and secure option, but since you can’t remove them for cleaning, they require flossing underneath to keep the area clean.
Getting Dentures in League City: What to Expect
At Westview Dental, we make the process of getting dentures as easy and comfortable as possible for our patients. We will do full examinations to understand the condition of your jawbone, gums, how your upper and lower jaw interact, and the condition of your remaining teeth. We will discuss your denture options with you to find the best long-term solution that fits your oral health and lifestyle needs.
After that, there are a few more steps:
- We will take dental impressions of your upper and lower teeth and jaws as we begin the process of customizing and creating dentures that fit with all of your remaining teeth.
- We send these impressions to a dental lab. Technicians there will design a replica of your mouth based on these impressions and use this model to design your dentures.
- Dental technicians will then craft a set of dentures using the desired materials to ensure a perfect fit. The dentures will also be polished so these artificial teeth look smooth and natural.
- Once your dentures are ready, you’ll come into our office for a fitting. We will check how the dentures fit and make adjustments as necessary.
This process may take a few appointments, and it can take some time to get used to wearing dentures. Dr. Jackson and Dr. Tucker will provide assistance and recommendations to ease your way through this process.
The Dentists League City Trusts for Top-Notch Dentures
Dentures can restore your ability to enjoy the foods you like, talk naturally and confidently with everyone you meet, and smile without hesitation again. Schedule an appointment at Westview Dental to discuss all of your denture options in our comfortable, friendly office.
