If you are looking for an alternative solution to dentures, then dental implants may be the right choice for you.
When all of your teeth are missing the most common way of replacing such a large number of teeth has, in the past been with conventional dentures. Conventional dentures can be uncomfortable and make you feel self-conscious but with dental implants they look and feel like your own teeth.
It may be that you have a large number of failing teeth which need to be extracted and an interim measure of providing a conventional denture may still be required. This will form part of your overall dental implant journey. The immediate denture, which is placed at the time of teeth extraction will provide information on where the dental implants need to be placed and also give us an idea of how the final restoration might look.
If all of the upper and lower teeth are to be replaced, then it is possible to use an entirely fixed reconstruction which does not need to be removed from the mouth.
Alternatively, at The Priory Dental Practice Harborne we can use a precision retained removable reconstruction which behaves in much the same way as a fixed bridge but enables us to replace bone (in the form of a denture flange) and therefore avoiding the need for bone grafting.
For elderly patients and people who might not be fit for a general anaesthetic, this is often a very satisfactory way of replacing a large number of teeth. Such a reconstruction will require somewhere between four and six dental implants but is is not necessary to replace every tooth with a dental implant.
