Dentures – Richardson, TX

Effects of Missing Teeth

When you are missing teeth, it can limit several aspects of your day-to-day routine. Here are some of the worst effects that missing teeth can have on your oral health and quality of life:

• Limits Your Diet: Tooth loss reduces the scope of foods you can eat because you can’t chew them thoroughly. This often leads to unpleasant symptoms like indigestion or acid reflux.
• Inhibits Your Speech: Missing teeth can make pronouncing words more difficult. Speech impediments like lisps, mumbling, and whistling are also common.
• Lowers Confidence: When you suffer from tooth loss, it can cause you to be more reluctant to smile and engage with people in social situations. This often also leads to a decrease in mental health due to feelings of stress and anxiety.

What Qualities Make a Good Candidate for Dentures?

Are you wondering if dentures are right for you? Here’s what we look for in a great denture candidate:

• Good Oral Health: The most important thing we look for in patients who want dentures is a clean bill of oral health. Having healthy gums and a dense jawbone is important to support your new prosthetics.
• A Commitment to Treatment: A willingness to commit to treatment, both at home and in the office, is a good sign that you’re ready for dentures.
• Missing Multiple Teeth: If you’re missing several teeth in a row, or even an entire dental arch, we offer several types of denture prosthetics that can restore your smile.
• A Need for Affordable Treatment: Dentures are one of the most manageable tooth replacement options when you’re on a tight budget.

Alternative Tooth-Replacement Options

If, for one reason or another, you find that dentures aren’t the right treatment to fit your needs, you have other options. We offer both dental bridges and implants that can help you recover from tooth loss.

• Dental Bridges: These are best for patients with healthy teeth on either side of a tooth gap. These would be reshaped, creating “posts” for a set of dental crowns connected by a false tooth called a pontic. This effectively fills the space left behind by a missing tooth with a single prosthetic.
• Dental Implants: An implant fixture is a small titanium rod that is surgically placed into your jawbone. This serves as a sturdy anchor point for different restorations including single crowns, dental bridges, or even dentures!

Learn More About Dental Bridges

Learn More About Dental Implants

What Are Dentures Made Of?

Dentures are typically compiled of two parts:

• The Base: This is the foundation on which your replacement teeth will be placed. The base is designed to match your gum tissue, providing a natural-looking solution for rebuilding your smile. It can be made out of a variety of materials, including nylon, resin, porcelain, acrylic, and metal. While full denture bases are usually made entirely out of acrylic, partial dentures will contain metal clips so that they can be anchored to nearby teeth.
• Artificial Teeth: These new pearly whites will typically be constructed out of resin or porcelain due to the material’s ability to mimic natural tooth enamel. That said, porcelain can be abrasive to normal teeth, so it’s mostly reserved for full dentures. Partial dentures tend to be made out of resin.

The Denture Creation Process

To fully personalize your future prosthetics, your denture treatment will generally involve multiple steps. Here’s what you can expect from the process:

• Hsia will first take impressions of your upper and lower gums to develop a plaster model of your mouth. This replica will then be used to create your final dentures. Our team will also take measurements of your jaw and send these to a dental lab.
• At the dental lab, the technicians will construct a wax version of your gum line before placing artificial teeth into them using an “articulator.”
• The lab technician will make any necessary minor adjustments to carve and shape the wax so that the base looks like your gums.
• The wax dentures will be sent to our office for a fitting, where we’ll confirm if the prosthetics fit you correctly. If so, we’ll send them back to the lab for completion.
• The technician will then boil the dentures to remove the wax by placing it in a flask. Plaster will be poured into the flask to maintain the denture’s shape.
• Holes will be made in the teeth so the material can more easily attach to them. Then, a liquid separator will be added to the plaster to keep the acrylic from sticking to it. The technician will then inject acrylic into the flask to replace the wax.
• Using special lab tools and an ultrasonic bath, the plaster will be removed to reveal the dentures.
• The technician will cut out any excess acrylic from the prosthetics before trimming and polishing them to perfection.
• The dentures will be sent to our office for a final fitting. Dr. Hsia will make any final adjustments to the prosthetics to ensure they fit correctly and that you’re satisfied with the results.

Adjusting to Your New Dentures

Most patients who receive dentures will expect to undergo an adjustment period where their mouth will have to get accustomed to having the prosthetics in. This is because you’ll need to practice using your new teeth for eating as well as speaking, which can take some time to get used to. With time, your dentures should begin to feel more natural. During your adjustment period, be sure to stick to soft foods and exercise your facial muscles every day. You might even consider asking your dentist for adhesive if necessary.

Psychological Benefits

Tooth loss can take a heavy toll on a person’s confidence and self-image, making it difficult for them to smile and engage socially. This can lead to issues such as sadness, loneliness, depression, and general dissatisfaction with life. Luckily, dentures allow patients to enjoy having beautiful and complete smiles that they can be proud to show off, reducing anxieties about eating, speaking, appearance, and social activities.

Clearer Enunciation

Tooth loss can make speaking difficult. The teeth play a crucial role in forming the sounds that make up words, and the loss of one can alter the way air flows around them during speech. Since dentures serve in the place of your missing teeth, they allow you to speak more clearly and avoid the embarrassment of frequently slurred words. While you may need some time to get used to speaking with dentures, it should feel perfectly natural after a few days of practice.

Improves Nutrition

It can be difficult to eat a healthy diet after tooth loss. Many nutritious foods like fresh meat and raw fruits and veggies have textures that make them harder to chew, and it can sometimes seem impossible to enjoy them after losing teeth. Missing out on or inadequately chewing such nutritious fare can lead to health problems like indigestion and malnutrition. By acting as your missing teeth, dentures can vastly improve your chewing ability so you can enjoy a varied diet that provides the protein, vitamins, and minerals your body needs to stay healthy.

Preserves Oral Health

After tooth loss, the empty space can make it easy for the remaining teeth to drift out of alignment, leading to headaches, TMJ issues, further dental injuries, and other oral health problems. Replacing your lost teeth with dentures can help keep your remaining teeth in their proper places. These appliances can also help distribute the pressure of chewing more evenly, thereby reducing the wear of the remaining teeth.

Expands Opportunities

A beautiful smile can be a powerful asset in the social scene and the professional world. Having a grin that you’re eager to display can make it much easier to make an excellent first impression, allowing you to ace job interviews, close sales, or land that juicy promotion. In fact, a 2019 study found that people with healthy smiles are more likely to be employed.

Removable Dentures

Remove After Eating

With your artificial teeth in place, you can once again enjoy your favorite meals with family and friends. That said, it’s a good idea to take them out to clean them after you’ve finished eating. They tend to trap bits of food that attract plaque-forming bacteria. Remember to use room-temperature water because too much heat can warp the acrylic, so your restoration no longer fits correctly.  

Clean Your Restoration

It’s also important to take your dentures out for a thorough cleaning at least twice daily. You can gently scrub them with a soft-bristled brush and mild dish soap that won’t abrade the material. Then, rinse them with water before putting them back in your mouth.

If you’re heading to bed for the night, leave your artificial teeth in a glass of cool water or a special solution to eradicate up to 99% of unwanted germs while you sleep.

Keep Your Dentures Safe

Your prosthetics are durable, but they’re not invincible. They can crack or break if they’re dropped from too high a surface. You may want to place a towel or cushion under you while you’re washing them because they can become slippery with soap and tumble to the floor.

Also, store your dentures in a safe place when you’re not wearing them. Keep them out of reach of small children or pets who may not know how to handle them carefully.

Remove Dentures When You Sleep

Once you’ve adjusted to having your restoration in your mouth all day, you might feel tempted to go to bed with it still inserted. Unfortunately, if your gums never get a break from the constant pressure of supporting your prosthetics, the tissue can become irritated, sore, or infected.

Instead, take them out at night to soak them so they’re ready to go the next morning.

Notice Changes

Paying attention to your dental condition helps you monitor your oral health, so you know when there’s a change that could point to an underlying condition. For example, if you notice that your gums look darker or puffier than usual, you might have an infection. Also, if your dentures are clicking or showing signs of not fitting properly, contact our team. We’ll need to see you to ensure that everything is working as intended to preserve your smile.

Factors That Affect the Cost of Dentures

Three factors in particular determine how much your dentures will cost. These are:

• Needed preliminary procedures: If you need gum disease treatment or tooth extractions before you can receive dentures, the associated cost will be reflected in your final bill.
• The composition of the base: The bases of dentures are usually made from lifelike acrylic that imitates the appearance of natural gum tissue, but some models are equipped with a wire mesh for increased strength.
• The composition of the teeth: The dental crowns attached to dentures are typically made from porcelain or acrylic.

Keep in mind that you can expect to get what you pay for, so the cheapest option is not always the best or even the least expensive in the long run. For example, a high-quality pair of dentures can last longer than a cheap pair, meaning the patient can go longer without expensive replacements.

Are Implant Dentures More Expensive?

Implant dentures are more expensive than the traditional varieties, but they can also last much longer and offer a range of additional benefits. Since implant dentures require several dental implants to be mounted on the arch, the costs of the materials used and the surgery that places them will be included in your final bill. However, implant dentures create a superior hold that allows patients to chew and speak confidently without fear of slipping. This allows the patient to enjoy a wide variety of foods for a healthier diet.

Does Dental Insurance Cover Dentures?

Since dentures are considered a major restorative procedure, dental insurance plans usually cover them at about 50%. However, it’s important to know what your provider offers since each insurance plan is different. Our team will be happy to go over the details of your insurance policy with you so that you can know exactly what it will pay for and how to get the most out of it.

Other Options for Making Dentures Affordable

While we accept a wide range of insurance providers, we also offer several other payment options. These include:

• We accept Medicaid and CHIP from eligible patients.
• We offer financing options through CareCredit and Sunbit, third-party financiers that offer plans to break your bill into easily manageable monthly installments with little or no interest and no surprise fees.

If you’d like to learn more about your financing options for dentures, we’ll be more than happy to discuss them with you during your consultation.