Imagine you own a car. A nice car—a fully tricked-out deal with custom everything. It’s gorgeous. Your friends are envious. But it has no wheels. It’s not much of a car if it doesn’t have wheels, is it? It can’t do what a car is designed to do, even if it looks an awful lot like a car. You can think about dentures in a similar way: If they look great but slip, slide, and make it harder to bite and speak, they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do in the first place. And if your traditional dentures no longer do the job, it might be time to consider mini denture implants.
The Problem With Dentures
Dentures
work fine for many people. And they have for centuries. However, for other people, dentures are an inconvenience, one that they don’t feel restores them to sufficient dental health.
This is understandable: Your dentures may fit well at first, but over time, they begin to loosen and shift. You may notice a change in your bite. For example, it may not be as strong, or your gums may develop sores after eating.
One reason for these changes is resorption. Resorption refers to the deterioration of jawbone density during extended periods of toothlessness. When you lose tooth roots, there’s nothing there to stimulate jawbone cell growth. That means bone density in that area diminishes, resulting in:
- Bite changes
- Difficulty speaking clearly
- Droopy facial appearance
- Headaches
- Jaw pain
- Wrinkles around the mouth
Because dentures sit on your gums, they don’t help to maintain jawbone health. However, dental implants do stimulate jawbone growth because they replace your missing tooth roots. For that and other reasons, they’re an excellent alternative to traditional dentures.
What Are Mini Denture Implants?
Dental implants are tiny titanium posts that we place into your jawbone via your gums. A dental prosthetic then snaps into the other end of the implants. This system anchors your false teeth to your jawbone, solving problems of sliding and loosening associated with traditional dentures. Additionally, the implants stimulate jawbone cell growth as you bite and chew.
Mini implants are a breakthrough in dental implant technology. They’ve become quite popular because of their advantages over traditional implants. One key benefit is their broader eligibility, which addresses a common challenge with conventional implants. To qualify for traditional implants, patients must have enough bone to support the posts. Sometimes, we can increase otherwise insufficient bone density with a bone graft. But this comes at an added expense and involves a great deal of healing time prior to the actual implant procedure.
Mini implants, on the other hand, are an option for most patients, even those who have experienced substantial bone loss. They’re made of the same biocompatible titanium material as traditional implants, but they’re about half the diameter. This makes the mini implant procedure simpler, quicker, and more comfortable—not to mention more cost-effective.
Mini Implant Procedure
The mini denture implant process is simple, thanks to the efficiency of the mini implant procedure:
- During your free consultation, we take a series of 3D images to diagnose the level of bone loss you’ve experienced, as well as to determine where to place the implants. We also take impressions of your mouth. We send these off to a lab, which creates your custom prosthetic.
- To begin the procedure itself, we first apply a local anesthetic to your gums.
- We create a small pilot hole in your gums wherever we’re going to place an implant. Then, we’ll gently insert each implant into the jawbone.
- So you’re never without teeth, we affix a temporary denture to the implant posts. You can then walk out of your appointment with a complete set of stable denture implants.
- After a couple of weeks of healing, during which the implants bond to your jawbone, we’ll fit you with your permanent, custom prosthetic.
Mini Denture Options
We offer a variety of mini denture options:
- Fix-on-Six®: This prosthetic rests on 6-10 mini dental implants. Patients don’t remove the prosthetic. We will do so during your routine six-month visits.
- Non-removable roundhouse bridge: This bridge replaces an entire arch of teeth. It is never removed, so it acts the most like natural teeth.
- Snap-on dentures: This is an implant-retained overdenture that snaps on and off of 4-8 mini dental implants. Snap-on dentures are similar to traditional dentures but provide greatly enhanced stability.
The type of mini implant dentures you choose depends mainly on how many implants your jawbone can support, along with your personal preferences. Your provider at the Center for Cosmetic Dentistry will help you decide which one is right for you.
Benefits of Mini Denture Implants
The primary benefit of mini denture implants is the stability they provide, but there are several other pluses to mini denture implants:
- They’re affordable: Because they’re smaller, a single piece, and typically don’t require bone grafts, mini implants cost less than traditional implants.
- The procedure is minimally invasive: Mini implants don’t require us to make incisions in your gums, making for a quicker procedure with less healing time.
- You’re probably eligible for them: Even if you’ve experienced significant resorption, you’re likely a candidate for mini denture implants.
Mini implants offer denture stability and comfort to more patients than ever before. That’s allowed millions of people to re-attain a quality of life they feared they’d lost forever.
Contact the Center for Cosmetic Dentistry Today
The providers at the Center for Cosmetic Dentistry in Cleveland, TN, know that traditional dentures aren’t an ideal solution for everyone. If you’re looking for greater stability, reliability, chewing power, and a more natural-looking prosthetic, ask us about mini denture implants today.
Contact us for a free consultation. You can walk out of your implant appointment with the kind of bright, beaming smile you haven’t had in years.
