Full Mouth Rehabilitation
Full mouth rehabilitation is a highly individualized treatment. The point of a full mouth reconstruction plan is to optimize the health of the entire mouth, including the teeth, the gums, and the bite and restore your youthful appearance that may have been lost due to the age changes that occur with missing teeth. To get years off your face and a confident smile affects the personality in a huge way.
In many cases, specially where multiple teeth are missing or there has been gradual wearing off of the surfaces of all teeth, it may be necessary to replace or restore every tooth in the mouth using a combination of dental services.
First and foremost it is important to understand the age related changes that take place due to the loss of teeth.
In a Nutshell
With the loss of teeth, the underlying bone shrinks in width, height and volume due to the lack of stimulation that is present in ligaments surrounding the tooth. There is a 25% decrease in width of bone during the first year after tooth loss and an overall 4 millimetres decrease in height over the next few years.
As bone loses width, it loses height, then width and height again, and gum tissue also gradually decreases. Ability to chew and to speak can be impaired. The more teeth lost, the more function is lost.
And it doesn’t stop there. The distance from nose to chin decreases and with it, the lower third of the face partially collapses.
So-called bite collapse can occur when only some of the back teeth, which support the height (vertical dimension) of the face, are missing. This can cause the front teeth to be squashed or pushed forward. As they were not designed to support facial height or to chew food.
Toothless people appear unhappy when their mouths are at rest because their lips, too, have sagged; unsupported by teeth and gum tissues they just cave in. Without teeth present, the tongue spreads into the space and the face collapses. The same is true of self-confidence.
The goal is to restore normal function, comfort, aesthetics, speech, and health to individuals who are missing teeth and thus boost their self-confidence and give them back their lost youthful appearance without actually making them undergoing plastic surgery!!!
