Rigid and aesthetic replacement teeth – Dental Implants, Bars and Teeth

At our Dental Implant clinic we treat many patients to help restore their chewing function and smile appearance. This week we discuss another treatment which has provided our patient with a truly life changing solution.

When missing all or most of your teeth, chewing becomes very difficult. Our patient in this example presented to the clinic having not been able to chew effectively for over 5 years due to the gradual progression of the periodontal problems that continued to affect all of her teeth. This resulted in the teeth becoming looser and either falling out or having to be removed. The patient had adapted to this issue by carefully selecting certain ‘soft’ foods to eat over the years and as a result was unable to eat with freedom.

As well as this issue, the cosmetic appearance of the smile was hugely affected and we find that this has a big impact on the patient’s confidence.

How to replace all of the missing teeth? Is Dental Implants the only way?

When selecting the choice of treatment we undergo a thorough consultation with the patient to gather all of the clinical information required for our team to assess the most suitable and successful options available to this case.

In certain patients following periodontal disease and tooth loss, we find that there is a large amount of bone loss as a direct result of the preceding dental problems. Our CBCT scanning allows us to accurately assess the available bone and plan within the safe limits of the patient’s anatomy.

In this case, we offered one option to have a conventional denture which would not be retained by implants. However, this is usually an inferior option that does not fully restore the patient’s function and therefore the patient decided against this.

Our second option was to provide Dental Implants linked using a customised milled bar. This would then provide the support for the replacement teeth. The benefit of linking the Dental Implants using a bar is to provide a ‘bracing’ effect across all of the implants. This would ensure that the occlusal loads are shared across all of the implants at all times therefore, never subjecting any single implant to an excessive force. We find this is a very good option to consider when planning implant treatment in patient’s who present with a reduced amount of available bone.

The treatment was planned very carefully using high level surgical skill, digital planning, technical skill and manufacturing to provide the state-of-the-art bar seen in the picture below. This then provided the support for the beautiful and natural aesthetic teeth to fully restore the patient’s upper and lower teeth.

Another benefit of having a milled bar is that it provides the ultimate solid structural foundation for the teeth. This results in no movement of the teeth in the mouth, enabling the patient to chew all of the foods she has been avoiding for so many years and also to laugh, smile and talk with confidence again.

It is an absolute privilege for our team to provide this care to so many patients. We understand that the problems that our patients present with are distressing for them and we take great care to understand their problems and design a treatment plan that will provide them with the safest and most suitable long term solution.

Thank you for reading

Mohsin Patel BDS MJDF RCS (Eng)