I’m not talking about just one or two teeth, I’m talking about implants that replace a full set of dentures.
I’ve seen advertisements for something called “all on four” and I can’t quite figure out how it works. You anchor an entire upper or lower set of teeth to just a few anchor posts? What, the plate then snaps onto those few posts? Is that removable? If not, what about stuff getting stuck under there? It would seem to me that is has to be removable, but the way these ads sound they’re supposed to be permanent, which to my mind implies they never come out?
It sounds like these are essentially dentures with a better way to stick them on so they don’t shift around, but still something you have to pull out of your mouth and clean on a regular basis.
Is “all on four” standard, or do/can some people opt for individual anchors for each replacement tooth? (I’m guessing the latter would be more expensive).
I have a bridge that spans a gap where two teeth are missing. (Lower molars) It is anchored to real teeth at each end. I don’t take it out, but I do have little plastic things to thread floss underneath - but that is I assume for the benefit of the anchor teeth. I simply brush the whole with a regular toothbrush as if it were real teeth.
I don’t see how something anchored to dental posts would be any different. The thing I’d be curious about is how 4 posts is sufficient for a full set. My understanding about dental posts was the big hurdle in their development was creating an implant that was able to stand the same stress as a regular tooth and not break loose from its anchoring bone. (Or do they tell you to avoid nuts and raw carrots and biting into apples?)
You don’t have to replace every tooth, you just need enough implants to hold bridges, even full plates. As few as two implants can hold an entire upper or lower plate. The plate can be, and should be removable, it would snap in and out of the implants making cleaning much easier. And of course the huge advantage to using a minimal number of implants is the cost saving.
So it is like a denture, but it’s held secure on the implants. You can eat pretty much anything someone with a full set of natural teeth can.
I had a full set of upper implants installed. Somehow, they became infected. This was asymptomatic, and nobody realized there was an infection until it had spread all around. The implants had to be removed. Now I have an upper denture.
I ended up in a full dentures top and bottom, but implants only on the bottom as the top was just too expensive to do. The bottom denture is a removable one mounted on two large implants. (In the 4mm range, I think, as opposed to the much smaller mini-implants you hear about.)
It has been an adventure as I started the process in January this year and one post didn’t heal properly, something knocked it lose in the bone graft and it never set right. So the dentist unscrewed it (that was interesting, no anesthetic, but no pain, more the mental picture) and gave the bone graft another couple months to heal so he would have something a bit firmer to screw into. He replaced the implant about a month ago and it seems to be healing correctly this time, it certainly feels more solid, so with luck we will attach the denture in another month or so.
When it became obvious a few years ago that my remaining teeth were heavily infected and needed to go, I consulted with my dentist. He suggested a 4 posts upper and 4 posts lower plan for full implant replacement with all new teeth. They put the titanium posts in and that secures a full set of teeth. Your gums and jaw bones grow into and around these implants and you now have a full set of teeth that are not removeable like dentures, they are permanent and require surgery to remove, just like normal teeth.
The cost was quote was $57,000 dollars! As in fifty seven thousand dollars.
So I decided to not spend my 401k and now I have dentures.
I know people who have gone out of the US the get this procedure and it was much cheaper. Mexico does a booming business in these sort of things. I wish I had the patent on those titanium screws because, like many other medical costs in the US, they are insanely expensive.
I was quoted numbers like that as well, which is why I went with a standard denture up top and the two screws in the bottom with the removable denture. Total cost out of pocket to have the bottom one in securely was about $10000.
