Missing teeth don’t look very nice, but the situation is often much more serious than it looks. Even if you could learn to live with a few missing teeth, you’d probably find it far too challenging to survive without any teeth at all. Unfortunately there are a growing number of adults who find that they are struggling to pin down a solution that they can actually live with.
Dentures are among the oldest and most common solutions to the problem of tooth loss, but it’s a solution that comes with a lot of compromise. Life with dentures is marked by a transition from your natural permanent teeth to false teeth that are removable. These new teeth cannot perform the full-time duties of real teeth because they only represent the top portion of your teeth.
Without a more realistic alternative for tooth replacement, your missing teeth can have a far-reaching effect on your dental health. The roots of your real teeth are necessary for stimulating the jawbone, and they also provide strong stability to support the forces that are needed for chewing. So, even with conventional dentures, most adults continue to suffer the ongoing consequences of tooth loss, such as bone loss, prosthesis mobility, soft tissue irritation, and inefficient chewing.
Your oral surgeon might suggest a more permanent solution such as All-on-4 attached teeth to remedy your concerns. In a single-day procedure in which a new arch of teeth can be locked into place with four dental implants, your bone loss and chewing difficulties can be solved. Now, the implant posts can serve as a true substitute for the missing tooth roots, with enough stimulation to stop bone loss and enough strength to improve your chewing efficiency.
The effects of tooth loss are certainly complex. The physical and emotional consequences can be debilitating. However, those factors can be surmounted when you combine the advantages of a set of four dental implants with a fixed full arch of teeth.
Contact Chicago’s premiere dental surgery clinic, ORA® Oral Surgery & Implant Studio, today to learn more.