Loose or floating dentures are more than just an inconvenience. As anyone with a loose denture knows, ill-fitting prosthetics can have a major impact on your quality of life. Floating dentures tend to shift, slip, or even fall out at inopportune moments, making for uncomfortable or even embarrassing mishaps. And the more your denture moves around your mouth, the less you’ll be able to function normally. If you’re tired of struggling with loose or floating dentures, book a free consultation at East Longmeadow Family Dental Center!
Using dental implants, we anchor your loose denture to your jawbone, securing your smile in place.
Different Types of Dentures
There are many types of dentures available at East Longmeadow Family Dental Center, each with different levels of stability:
Full dentures: This traditional option is designed for those who’ve lost all their teeth. These dentures rest on your gums, but over time, they tend to lose their perfect fit, leading to floating dentures.- Partial dentures: These prosthetics are for patients who still have some natural teeth remaining. By connecting to existing teeth, partial dentures offer a bit more stability than full dentures, but still tend to shift over time.
- Implant-retained dentures: Dental implants are artificial tooth roots we place in your jaw to anchor dentures. An implant-retained denture snaps onto dental implants, ensuring it remains firmly in place while still removable.
- Implant-supported dentures: For a more permanent option, we provide implant-supported dentures that are even more stable. Only an implant dentist like Dr. Zirakian will remove them for cleaning. And for those who want to mimic the appearance and feel of their natural teeth, we offer a cemented, non-removable option as well!
How Do Implants Secure Floating Dentures?
With dental implants, your dentures won’t be able to shift or slip around in your mouth. But how do they work?
Traditional dentures replace missing teeth, but only on the surface. These restorations don’t replace the tooth roots (or the bottom portion of your teeth), which were embedded in your jaw.
Tooth roots are essential to keeping your jawbone healthy, and without them, your bone will shrink over time. But because traditional dentures need your jawbone for support, this bone loss has a major impact on the stability of your artificial smile. As your jaw loses mass and volume, your dentures lose their perfect fit, creating a variety of problems.
But dental implants replace these missing tooth roots, and create a strong foundation for your dentures to rely on!
These titanium screws embed in your jaw, stimulating it like a tooth root whenever you bite or chew. And thanks to their biocompatible titanium design, these implants are able to integrate with your bone. Using this incredibly strong connection, we then anchor your denture to your implants, restoring your smile and preventing loose dentures.
Additionally, Dr. Gregory Zirakian, at East Longmeadow Family Dental Center, offers mini dental implants! These titanium posts are a less invasive but equally effective option for securing floating dentures.
The Mini Implant Denture Process
Depending on your needs and preferences, stabilizing your denture with mini implants may look different from how we stabilize someone else’s smile.
For example, if you’re interested in an implant-retained denture and have a traditional denture in good condition, we may be able to stabilize your existing denture! By adding implants to your jawbone and creating housings (or spaces) in the denture base that lock onto the implant, we can transform your floating denture into a more secure solution.
However, your current traditional denture must be in good condition and large enough to fit the implants. If we can’t use your denture, we will take impressions of your smile and create a new denture with built-in housings.
Placing mini dental implants is simple because the procedure is minimally invasive. We simply make a small pilot hole in your gums and gently screw the implant in place, where it immediately begins to stabilize in your jawbone. Over the next few weeks, as your implants fully integrate with your jaw, you’ll wear a temporary denture to protect your smile and keep it functional.
Once your implants are secure, we will place your final denture on them, permanently securing your smile in place.
Embrace a Life Without Floating Dentures
If your loose dentures are affecting your quality of life, we recommend upgrading to a more stable restoration. Using dental implants, we anchor your prosthetic in place, creating a strong and functional smile that lasts. During your free consultation, we will go over your implant denture options and find a solution that works for you.
Book a free consultation with us to learn if you’re eligible for mini implant dentures.
Connect with Dr. Zirakian on Facebook to review our implant denture options in depth.
