Too much gums!? What do you do?

It was nice to have a day off and everyone in the city is always in a good mood this time of year...at least those of us who are not vacationing somewhere!!
Today a patient came in who had lost all the teeth on one side of his lower jaw...the implant surgeon placed three implants and we will be restoring the entire lower right area with implants.
Here is the photo of the the front two implants...

Today's procedure is really only about the front two of the implants as they will support a three tooth bridge...while the last back implant will have a single cap restoration...so take a close look at the front two...


This is a situation where the gums that are between the two implants are very high and bulbous and any artificial tooth placed on this will both not look natural and will collect food underneath...so...we will recontour the gums, place a temp bridge for about a month, let it heal and then hopefully have a better gum contour when we see the patient next...
so here we have anesthetized the patient and gently recontoured the gums...

And a three tooth temp bridge has been placed...this bridge will not only provide the patient with some teeth to chew but will hold our gums down in the area that we have reshaped them....we will work on the very back implant at a future appointment!

I can chew...I can chew...

Used to be that when you lost your teeth you did not have much choice...you had to wear a removable set of false teeth...called a full denture, which unfortunately is a poor substitute for real teeth in most cases...but with today's hi tech solutions, we have much more to offer our patients....specifically implants....
and it gives the patient a full set of teeth that are permanently placed in the jaw and really feel and chew like your own natural teeth....
Unfortunately...many people have come in and told me how they have heard that implants are so painful that they would never consider them...but when done properly they are incredibly painless and hugely rewarding...take a look...

This patient has been holding on to several of her own teeth which have been supporting a bridge...but the time has come where the natural teeth have to be removed...
Luckily she is a good candidate for implants and she will not have to wear a denture...she had 8 implants placed into the lower jaw about 6 months ago and now they are ready to have teeth placed on them...
the first step is to take the impressions...here is photo where the transfer copings are in place(arrows point to my transfer devices, including that plastic thing that looks like a lego piece)....and an impression of the entire lower jaw was made.

It is now two weeks later and the lab has fabricated new posts(abutments)that are screwed into the implants(which are in the bone)...The first thing I do is extract the four remaining teeth...I then try in all the implants and due to some good planning and a little luck all the implants screw down nicely....

It is now time to try in the temporary lower teeth...and again we have a nice result..the temps go right to place and with just a few minutes of adjustment we have a patient who has a full new lower set of teeth...they are cemented into her mouth with a temp cement...and she is thrilled...

The first thing you are probably thinking is wow..those are huge long teeth..but keep in mind that these photos are taken with a retractor and the patients lips and cheeks hide that length and she is beautiful...
And belive it or not this patient left the office on her own, met her husband and is going out to dinner!!

Stay tuned for more as we still have to convert these temps to porcelain caps and we are going to be doing the upper teeth as well....!!

Mix n' Match

Sometimes to get the desired result when a patient is missing several teeth we have to combine therapies. I am going to give you the photos in reverse order today.
This patient has been restored with 4 new teeth today as you can see in the first picture

Now to show you what we did take a look at the next photo and you can see that the first of the missing teeth was restored with a regular porcelain crown on the canine tooth...

The last three teeth have been restored with an implant supported bridge...as you can see there are two implants and a space..so two implant crowns were made and an artificial tooth is between them....

Super-Teeth!

So take a look at fig. 1...seemingly two pretty normal looking teeth?
Well the patient certainly thinks so....they look good, they feel good and they bite good! But these are no ordinary teeth...they are super teeth....because underneath them they are just a little different than your average ordinary teeth!
This patient had lost the teeth in this region and we decided to replace them with implants...so...an implant surgeon placed two implants into the region and I was able to use the posts that emerged from the gum, also called the abutments, to build two caps(crowns).
Contrary to what many people have heard, there was minimal discomfort with the implant surgery and now the patient has two teeth that are probably stronger than any other teeth in his mouth....hence...superteeth


And in case you did not notice...the last tooth, that big molar, is also on an implant as the x-ray clearly shows!

So if you have lost a tooth...or two...or more...or even all of your teeth...then you can also have some superteeth....just ask for implants!!