Is This The End Of The Road For False Teeth As We Know It?
In the words of Bob Dylan “The times they are a changing” especially when it comes to dental implants in Richmond. 25 years ago, if you had lost your teeth, the only option open to you was to wear a set of cheap and cheerful “falsies”. Although they were available for FREE on the NHS, they were utterly useless as a set of functioning teeth. Even though they looked okay, you had more hope of walking on water than your teeth actually staying in your mouth. Also 20 years ago, dental implants were in their infancy with only a few brave dentists offering the service to patients with money to burn. However fast forward ten years and the picture looked slightly different.
2000
At the turn of the 21st century, if you lost all your teeth (both top and bottom) it was now possible to find a handful of dentists who would be happy to replace all your teeth with a full set of porcelain prosthetics. However the costs were still pretty eye watering. In fact you probably needed serious property equity to be able to afford them. Each porcelain tooth would be painstakingly and individually crafted, often taking the dentist months to complete, and were held in place cantilevered off 10 individual dental implants.
Around this time dentists realised that there must be a better way of fitting a full set of dentures using fewer implants and hey presto…the implant retained denture as we know it was born. Now a full arch of dentures could be held in place via a framework which itself was anchored with less dental implants. In Richmond, and indeed many other clinics up and down the country,this technique (known as implant supported dentures) was quickly adopted.
The only problem was that they were still dentures, They still need to be removed for cleaning so no matter how well they remained in position, in the patient’s eyes, they were still wearing ‘falsies’
2010
Just a few years ago in 2010, the next generation of implant retained dentures came into being. Known as full-arch implants they cleverly combined the ease of construction of the implant retained denture with a set of permanently fixed, stable teeth that really did feel like they were your own. Without the weeks of waiting it became possible to replace both a top and bottom set relatively quickly; and for a fee that was far less challenging than the old ceramic bridges of just ten years before. By utilising digital scanning technology, laboratories were able to produce micro-tolerance arches of teeth that could be permanently fixed into place using as few as 4 implants. The result were top quality acrylic teeth, that looked, felt and even acted just like your previous natural set.
So where do we go from here?
How about growing your own teeth! According to one newspaper dentists are confident that at some point in the very near future a small ball of cells can be implanted where the missing tooth once was Over time this would grow into a fully functioning natural tooth. The procedure can be performed quickly using a local anaesthetic and cells can grow into fully functioning teeth in a matter of months. The benefits are that this technique can be performed on pretty much anyone, whether they have limited bone mass or not.
So with technology moving so fast, is this the final nail in the coffin for ‘falsies’ as we know them? We’ll let you decide.
In the meantime if you’d like to find out more about dental implants in Richmond then why not contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation. To book yours either visit our website at www.sheendentalimplants.co.uk or contact us directly on 020 8876 5277 today. Dr Harmit Kalsi and the team are looking forward to helping you.