I’m am only 58 years old and have lower dentures. They will not stay in anymore. My dentist told me that I have lost a lot of the ridge that holds them in. Is there anything I can do to keep them in? Not even adhesives work at this point?

Della

Dear Della,

Before and After Facial Collapse

This is a difficult position you are in. When you first got dentures, your body immediately recognized that you did not have teeth on your bottom arch anymore. In order to be as efficient with your body’s resources as possible, it began to resorb the minerals in your jawbone in order to use them elsewhere in your body where it feels they will be more useful. This has the unfortunate effect of shrinking the jawbone, which includes the ridge that holds in your dentures. This is known as facial collapse. By the way, it also tends to make you look older than you are as well.

Implant Overdentures

The solution to this is bone grafting. It is an outpatient procedure that will build the bone back up. Once you have that bone you have a couple of choices. You can just get dentures again, but you will have the same cycle of facial collapse start again. Ideally, you would instead get implant supported dentures. These use between four to six dental implants and then anchor the denture to them.

If you cannot afford that many dental implants, you could look into getting snap-on dentures. This uses just two implants and your denture will snap onto them. This will keep your bone in that area from shrinking, which will prevent them from falling out ever again. Obviously, the implant overdentures will be more secure because they have more implants, but even just the snap-on dentures will be a good option for you.

This blog is brought to you by Tulsa Dentist Dr. Ryan Noah.