When driving a car, it’s important to trust that your vehicle will get you where you need to go. If you drive an old, broken-down car, you may be hesitant to take it on long drives or over bumpy roads. When driving a new car in good condition, that fear melts away, allowing you to drive with little hesitation. Similarly, old and ill-fitting dentures often struggle to break down foods, forcing you to limit your diet. Fortunately, with implants in place, your denture is strong enough to chew all the foods you love with little to no restrictions! At East Longmeadow Family Dental Center, we offer full-arch dental implants to secure your smile and anchor your denture in place!
What Are Full Arch Dental Implants?
“Full-arch” refers to the entire row of teeth that make up your smile. This arch follows the natural curve of your jaw, with the upper and lower arches fitting together perfectly to provide a strong and stable bite.
Unfortunately, the prevalence of complete tooth loss among those 65 and older is around 13%, and only increases with age! The most common full arch replacement method is traditional dentures, but these prosthetics often fall short of expectations.
Traditional dentures rely on your jawbone for support, which makes for a poor foundation. As you lose teeth, you lose the vital tooth roots responsible for maintaining the health of your jawbone! Without these roots, your bone will gradually lose mass and volume, causing your dentures to shift in your mouth.
Loose dentures create numerous problems for patients like you, as they prevent your smile from functioning effectively. Fortunately, we offer full-arch dental implants to support loose dentures, securing them in place! By strategically placing these implants around your jawbone, we anchor your restoration, allowing you to chew and smile with confidence.
Using Mini Implants for Full-Arch Restorations
At East Longmeadow Family Dental Center, we utilize both conventional dental implants and mini dental implants.
Conventional implants are larger in diameter, around 5 mm. These titanium screws secure in your jawbone, providing a stable foundation for your denture restorations! However, they require ample jawbone structure for placement, which many patients lack due to tooth loss. While we provide additional procedures, such as a bone graft or sinus lift, to restore lost bone, these only add to the cost and length of your implant procedure.
Thankfully, we offer mini dental implants as an amazing alternative! These one-piece titanium posts are less than 3 mm in diameter, requiring much less bone structure to secure. Due to their small size, mini implants reduce the need for additional procedures. Instead, they require us to use a minimally invasive placement process that helps facilitate faster healing.
As soon as we place these implants in your jawbone, they are immediately stable enough to support a temporary restoration, allowing us to restore your smile in just one day!
Our Implant Denture Options
We offer three distinct implant-supported dentures that vary in design and removability. These full-arch restorations include:
- Implant overdentures: Utilizing 4 to 8 mini implants for support, implant overdentures effectively and affordably restore your smile. This prosthetic closely mimics the appearance of a traditional denture, but without the bulky upper denture plate that covers the roof of your mouth. Instead, they snap on and off implants to maintain their removability and security. Additionally, if it’s in good condition, we may be able to add mini implants to your existing denture, transforming it into an overdenture!
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A semi-removable roundhouse bridge secures on 6 to 10 mini implants and is only removed by a trained professional. Semi-removable roundhouse bridges: A roundhouse bridge features a much sleeker design than an implant overdenture, as it removes a good portion of the denture base. This prosthetic secures on 6 to 10 full-arch dental implants, providing incredible stability. However, it’s important to note that you never remove this denture. Instead, we remove it for you, and only at routine dental visits. The rest of the time, your prosthetic remains securely in place on your implants, providing a stable bite.
- Non-removable roundhouse bridges: This denture requires 10 to 12 mini implants, providing maximum stability. Just like your natural teeth, a non-removable roundhouse bridge doesn’t need a denture base. Instead, it secures directly onto your implants! This creates a natural-looking restoration that we permanently cement in place. While this full-arch restoration is the most expensive of the three, it’s the closest you can get to having your natural teeth back.
Full Arch Dental Implants at East Longmeadow Family Dental Center
When driving, you need a car that’s built to last. When chewing food, you need a smile that’s built to last, too! Using full-arch dental implants, we secure your prosthetic in place to provide a strong and functional smile. Book a free consultation today to discover which full-arch restoration is the best choice for you!
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