Full Mouth Reconstruction
Richardson, TX
 According to the American Dental Association (ADA), by age 50, the average American will have lost at least 12 teeth in their lifetime. For some people, that number can actually be much higher. When you are part of that population with fewer teeth, you might want to opt for something like dentures. However, at Dr. Xixi Wu we can give you a better solution that will not only make you look better but will also function just as well as normal teeth. For people with severe levels of tooth loss, we recommend a high-quality full mouth reconstruction in our clinic.
Preparing Your Mouth
Full mouth reconstruction is a multi-step process that involves a variety of our skilled team of dental professionals to work on your mouth. Depending on your case, our orthodontists may work with our oral surgeons to help you bring your dental implants into proper working condition with your remaining teeth. However, all reconstruction involves one of our prosthodontists who make dental prosthetics to fit your mouth.
Before starting out, we first take a look at how your remaining teeth are arranged and how healthy they are. As a rule, we do not extract teeth if they are still good enough to repair. This also applies here, even though you may only have one or two teeth left. Doing this generally makes it more economical and drastically improves the chances of successfully placing the dental implants.
In addition to tooth bonding and extraction, we will also need to do ridge augmentations and preservations whenever possible. This gives your gums a better fit for bridges and provides a base for installing dental implant posts. We can also install these posts on your jawbones instead, if your alveolar ridges have lost all volume.
All of these can take you two to three trips to our clinic depending on your mouth. We may also need to wait for four to six months before moving on to the next process.
Adding in the Teeth
The most important part of the reconstruction process is placing the prosthetic teeth. The general plan for doing this is to place a few dental implants per jaw before adding in bridges. Bridges are rows of prosthetic teeth that connect to either implants or natural teeth. They are named that way because they function similarly to real-life bridges, which are connected to two points at a time.
In addition to bridges, we may also place dental crowns over your remaining natural teeth. These are small caps in which we fit over your damaged teeth with degraded enamel. This protects them from further damage and doubles as a way for us to place the bridges next to them.
Overall, the proper method of full mouth reconstruction requires a sufficient strategy and planned preparation to make sure that everything fits together. The kinds of implants we place will always depend on how your mouth looks and what remaining teeth we can save. We can discuss the kinds of dental implants you may need during an appointment with us at Dr. Xixi Wu. To learn more, please give us a call at (972) 669-9444 today to schedule an appointment. |
