For the best natural look, the prosthodontist would require a good picture model of your current teeth prior to having them removed. This will insure creating teeth appropriate for your new dentures. Your mouth will need to be examined to determine whether or not there is damaged oral tissue that usually is caused by injury or previous prostheses. If there is damaged tissue, they may use a tissue conditioner for a period of time, which will allow the tissue to heal prior to getting your new dentures. If where the denture ridges will lay, are not square enough, you may require surgery to recontour them. The last thing that needs to be examined is the fleshy strip of tissue that connects to the floor of the tongue. If it is attached abnormally, this will interfere with the adequate seal that is needed for wearing dentures. Therefore, a frenectomy will need to be done to repair such tissue.
After you have gone through all the examinations done by the prosthodontist, they will then begin the preparation for the creation of your new dentures. They will take a sticky material that feels like wax and put it in your mouth and have you bite down. This will be in your mouth for a couple of minutes, but will feel like hours. This will then be removed and will be used for the plaster models that they will create at the lab for your new dentures to be constructed. In order for the proper dentures to be constructed for a person, plaster models of the upper and lower jaw must be created.
Taking two chunks of square plastic, the construction of the new dentures begins. Each square will need to be three inches by three inches, by one inch. You will need to first heat each base, to form the proper creation of the denture base to fit both the upper and lower jaws. Using a pink acrylic, you will then need to heat cure the denture base to fill any void that may have been caused by bone shrinkage in the jaw. As a person ages, there is ongoing deterioration that occurs in the jawbone. To avoid the gaps normally caused by gum and bone shrinkage, spaces are created between the dentures, as well as in each part of the mouth where the new dentures will rest. The dentures will have a ledge that will be a semicircular depression, so that they fit securely in the mouth.
In order to complete the creation of your new dentures, you must decide whether to use porcelain or plastic teeth. Most front teeth are created using porcelain, which require one to two small metal gold pins to the back side of each tooth and then are connected to the denture base plastic. The remainder of the teeth will be formed using acrylic resin. Holes are drilled into the denture base of where your new teeth will be both bonded and some, screwed into. The acrylic resin teeth will be secured to the denture base using a denture stickum, which is bonding glue used primarily for the construction of dentures. Denture implants would be primarily the same, but they would require to be actually screwed into the jawbone.
