Doctor, how long can I use this denture?
This is a very important question for patients, but it is a difficult question for dentists to answer.
Patients often have only one pair of dentures, so this problem will directly affect his quality of life, including oral functions such as eating and speaking at ordinary times. In addition, for most people, making dentures is also a big expense, which definitely needs careful consideration.
For dentists, they have seen all kinds of patients and dentures, with [shelf life] as long as 30 to 40 years and as short as a month or two. How do you explain this problem?
Dentures [usable] is what’s meaning?
The two most important functions of dentures are to restore function and beauty.
1. Functions
Mainly refers to the chewing function. After installing dentures, you can eat normally, and you can also avoid the continuous excessive stress on other healthy teeth and protect joint health. These are all functional recovery of dentures.
2. Beauty
It is easy to understand that it is possible to restore the patient’s appearance before missing teeth as much as possible, and sometimes it can even add to the icing on the cake.
Obviously, the most basic requirement of [usability] is to restore oral function, but also to avoid causing more damage. Especially for large teeth deep in the oral cavity, the aesthetic recovery effect is relatively weak than the functional recovery.
How long can porcelain teeth, movable dentures and dental implants last?
Returning to what we said at the beginning, dentists have seen dentures with such a long span that no one can summarize them with one or two numbers.
The service life of various dentures is related to the patient’s missing teeth, daily usage habits, whole body health, as well as the doctor’s technology, dentures type and material selection, and there is no absolute concept of “shelf life”.
In addition, even if there are some minor denture injuries, such as slight surface collapse injuries of porcelain teeth and all-porcelain teeth, the normal use will not be affected.
To give a few common examples that shorten the shelf life of dentures:
- If a patient especially likes to eat melon seeds and his incisors are equipped with dentures, then the dentures will have problems in a very short period of time. Another example is that patients who have made porcelain teeth often bite hard objects such as bones, thus greatly increasing the possibility of surface porcelain collapse. If you do a movable denture and do not do a good job of cleaning, the natural teeth on both sides as abutment teeth are also more prone to tooth decay and pulpitis.
In the end, these conditions will make dentures no longer suitable.
In addition to the function, with the increase of service life, the color of dentures will also change.
In particular, plastic texture movable dentures, coupled with poor cleaning, will turn yellow over time and become out of harmony with the surrounding teeth. When it comes to [facade] teeth, such as incisors, when discoloration occurs, for patients with high aesthetic requirements, it also indicates that dentures should be replaced.
Therefore, assuming that the patient’s compliance is very good and formal and appropriate treatment methods are adopted, it is also possible to carefully brush teeth, regularly wash teeth and other suitable nursing methods at ordinary times, and carry out regular examination. In a long period of time, the reliability of various dentures can meet the needs.
Combined with some empirical summary, in terms of function, it is generally believed that movable dentures can maintain a relatively good state within five years and fixed dentures can maintain a longer time. In terms of beauty, it depends more on the patient’s usual nursing.
How can dentures be used for a few more years?
There are still some methods, and some pay attention to daily maintenance.
1. Movable dentures are the ones that can be removed.
It is necessary to remove it after eating every time and carry out simple cleaning. You can use clear water or special denture cleaner.
Don’t make your own decisions and use all kinds of strange liquids to clean them-some people use vinegar and some people use wine… In short, cleaning with these things is more likely to cause discoloration and deformation of dentures. In addition, when sleeping, you should also remove the movable dentures, and soak them in clear water after cleaning the toothbrush.
2. Fixed dentures are the ones that cannot be removed.
Fixed dentures such as porcelain teeth, all-porcelain teeth and dental implants are not free to disassemble like movable dentures. On the one hand, it is very convenient for the wearer and does not need to be removed and cleaned frequently, but on the other hand, it is also difficult to clean.
Fixed dentures are like their own natural teeth. All need to be cleaned by brushing their teeth. It is very important to ensure that the holding gums are brushed, especially the fixed dentures that have been used for a long time. Because some gingival recession may occur, food residues are easy to appear on the gingival and tooth edges, which are very important causes of gingival inflammation, bleeding and pus flow.
3. Protect the remaining teeth!
In fact, the health of the remaining teeth has a great influence on the effective use time limit of dentures.
In many cases, such as movable dentures and partially fixed dentures are in close contact with the remaining teeth around them. However, once the remaining teeth have problems such as tooth decay and looseness, even the original undamaged dentures can only be removed.
4. Repair it in time if it breaks down.
Last but not least, it is found that the dentures have been damaged, including various phenomena such as fracture and warping. Dentists should be found in time. They can make professional adjustments and even make new dentures again.
In addition, routine oral examination every six months to once a year is the best way to find hidden dangers of dentures as early as possible.