Cause And Effect Relationships – Bad Bite Dentures
Achieving the Best Fit and Function for Your Dentures
Are you looking for an expert dentist in Milwaukee, WI to fix your bad dentures? Hampton Dental Associates has you covered, with our state of the art technology and highly experienced professionals. Comfortable, functional and attractive dentures seem like an oxymoron to most denture wearers. Denture patients are often embarrassed to talk about their problems. They resign themselves to using a lot of denture goop and face the prospect of eating in public with trepidation at times.
“My neighbor/husband/wife can eat anything with dentures why can’t I?” Often the dentist is blamed for this series of problems. “My dentures click, they pop out easily when I yawn, they rock, I have constant sores in my mouth” …. are all problems that dentists hear.
In the adjacent photo, our patient was concerned about her lower jaw jutting forward (bulldog type underbite). It was beginning to affect her ability to eat, converse and socialize openly. Understandably, she became very self-conscious.
Occlusion Dynamics and Dentures
These types of denture problems, for the most part, are avoidable and are treatable. Denture Occlusion is the culprit with most unsuccessful denture fittings.
Most dentists make dentures in 2-3 visits and fail to perform a series of sequential assessments and adjustments that are needed to balance the occlusion and create the best, near perfect bite as possible.
Typically, these same dentists were and continue to be taught to set denture teeth over existing bone. This may be common sense for a patient that recently lost their teeth, but for a person who is already a denture wearer, it can lead to the misery and disappointment felt by our patient in the previous photo.
Bone loss for denture wearers is a normal process. Bone loss can range all the way up to 60% over the years. Fitting new dentures over a bone that has already deteriorated commonly cause shifts in the jawbone alignment, causing severe overbite or underbite conditions.
Looking closely at our 2nd pre-op photo, our patient can be seen, from a frontal view, to have a very poor bite and alignment issue between the maxilla and mandible (upper and lower jaws, respectively). Eating hard foods were impossible for her. Certain speech sounds were beginning to deteriorate.
Advanced Reconstructive Dentistry
Technical tools for assessing and correcting these common problems exist but unfortunately are readily used by only a small number of dentists practicing denture dentistry. In our practice, we routinely implement articulation devices that create the technical data needed for developing a treatment plan that can successfully overcome practically any occlusal bite problem.
Dr. Winter has several articulator devices that are designed to assess jaw bone movements and create different sets of technical data….. depending upon the original causal factors of a poorly aligned bite.
Worn down dentistry, genetic developmental growth patterns, physical trauma to the jaw (sports injury), oral diseases, untreated extractions, long standing bone resorption, etc.
For our patient with the severe underbite, a Facebow Articulator, as pictured here, was used to provide the analytical data that was generated from her impressions.
See What Our Patients Are Saying:
Best experience I have ever had at the dentist! Such a warm and caring atmosphere! Amazing staff, hygienists, and of course dentists! Dr. Bruce and Dr. Rick are the best! They listen to your concerns and truly care for you. I love my smile and it is thanks to them! - Robert K.
Turbyfill Reconstructive Dentistry
Implementing the Turbyfill System (created by renowned Prosthodontist Jack Turbyfill), Dr. Winter created an initial set of training dentures that were then used to generate analyses of bite, occlusion, the height of vertical dimension, speech patterns, TMJoint characteristics and other data.
These extra steps and procedures led to the development of a denture solution that produced precisely what the patient was looking for.
She simply wanted a normal bite again – without an underbite, great looking teeth, have the ability to eat just about anything she wanted and to regain the social confidence she had been missing for a long time.
Understandably, by reviewing the adjacent photo closely, our patient was ecstatic with her new teeth. She felt great, looked great… and had new teeth that only her closest friends and family knew…. were dentures.
Dentures can be attractive, feel comfortable and most importantly… NOT look like dentures. Having access to technologies and more importantly, a creative experience can really make a difference.
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