When Do you Need to Have a Complete Denture or a Partial Denture?

Missing some teeth, are we? Lost the complete set? It doesn’t matter how or why you lost your chewing organs, but you can think about replacements. There are many options available for this, but dentures can be the most economical as well as practical.

What are dentures?

Removable teeth! Not your natural ones, no. Dentures consist of an acrylic material that’s pink and looks like gum, with artificial teeth attached to it.

So dentures look completely natural. The upper dentures are placed opposite the palate of your mouth (usually with a similar shape) at the top. Lower dentures have a horseshoe shape so your tongue can move freely and are placed on top of your existing gums.

The Different Types of Dentures

Dentures come in a variety of sizes and shapes, but they are categorized into two primary categories – Partial and Complete.

As you probably guessed, partial ones are used if you have only a few open windows in your teeth line, and complete ones are your choice for your toothless void. Let us look at both options in brief.

1. Partial denture

A partial denture is a removal piece of pinkish material with synthetic teeth attached to it where your teeth are actually missing. It is usually made on a case by case basis, because every case has a diverse number of missing teeth, at different places and / or in a continuous line. There’s a metal framework on each end that encloses the natural teeth on either side to fix the denture in place.

1. Complete denture

This is what you ask for when you have nothing left in your mouth other than your gums, tongue and hopefully a tonsil at the back. “The setting up” is similar to a partial denture and it can be removed as well, but there is no metal framework to keep it in place.

Furthermore, you have two options in this type of denture – Immediate and Conventional. Conventional dentures are made to fit once your gums have healed from tooth extraction. Immediate dentures are a little different. They are made well before your extraction surgery and are fixed as soon as your tooth extraction is complete.

What should you choose?

Logic dictates to go for a partial denture if you only have a few teeth missing, but you can not argue with age. What if you keep losing your teeth after you get a partial denture?

The bottom line is – it depends on how much pain and expenditure you are willing to suffer from. Or even more importantly, how bad your condition is. Self-diagnosis is impossible in case of dental problems so it is better to leave it to your dentist to choose the most suitable denture for you. There are other factors that you also have to consider before choosing the perfect denture like its color. While the whitest one may be tempting, it is essential that the color matches the rest of your teeth and is a comfortable fit.

Do not be afraid to undergo a full denture just because it might hurt. The process will benefit you in the long run. Once you have a denture, it might take some time for you to adjust to them and during this time, you might feel pain. However, it will pass.