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E: Are you looking for a long-term and easier solution than traditional partial dentures? If so, retaining dentures may be the ideal option for you. Retaining dentures are typically used when a person doesn’t have any teeth in their jaw but still has enough bone to support metal dental implants.
There are two types of retaining dentures; bar-retained dentures and ball-retained dentures. Both procedures involve placing dental implants into your jawbone, placing abutments onto the implant heads and fitting a metal bar and framework for the dentures to be attached to.
Treatment Preparation
The process will begin with an initial consultation with our experienced and professional dental team. We’ll review your dental history, take x-rays of your mouth and create moulds of your teeth and gums. To determine where your sinuses and nerves are, and to ensure that these are not affected by the implants, we’ll also take a CT scan.
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The Treatment Process
Our dental team will begin by making an incision in the gum, followed by drilling a hole into the bone and inserting your implants. If the implants are placed in the lower jaw, you will need to wait up to four months, and up to six months if they are placed in the upper jaw. During this time, your implants will fuse in a process called osseointegration.
If you opt for bar-retained dentures, a thin metal bar that mimics the natural shape of your jawline will be attached to at least two metal dental implants. The dentures are securely attached via clips to the metal bar. Should you choose to go for ball-retained dentures, each implant holds a metal attachment which slots into another attachment on the denture.
Once your implants have fully healed, which takes roughly six months, we will make small incisions in your gum to expose each of the implants’ heads. We will then place healing caps over each of the implants, which ensures your gums heal correctly, for up to fourteen days.
Following this, we will then replace the healing caps with abutments and create an impression of your gum tissue to make a denture framework. The metal bar and denture framework are then fitted to the abutments and then, if there are no issues, permanently secured.
Benefits
By opting for retaining dentures, you’ll not only improve your facial structure and be able to eat and speak much more comfortably, but get your confidence and smile back too. In comparison with traditional partial dentures, retaining dentures are much more secure, which means you won’t have to worry about them becoming loose or falling out.