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Dentures & Reconstruction
The largest sums in dentistry and the least reversible decisions, frequently made by people who are already tired of dental treatment.
Rebuilding a mouth is a design problem before it is a manual one. Where the bite should sit, how much room there is for the restorations, which teeth are worth keeping and which are quietly compromising everything built onto them — these get decided early, and everything afterwards inherits them.
A reconstruction that goes wrong rarely fails all at once. It fails at one joint, gets patched, fails at the next, and eventually gets replaced. Which is why the planning stage is the one worth paying for.
What we look for
A diagnostic phase that produced something the patient could actually assess: mounted models, a wax-up, or a provisional worn for weeks before anything permanent. A stated position on which teeth are being kept and why, since keeping a doubtful tooth under a large restoration is the commonest expensive mistake here. Treatment staged so that the patient can stop at a functional point rather than being committed to the whole plan at the outset. Laboratory work by a named technician, with the communication recorded. And a maintenance and repair schedule quoted up front.
Questions worth asking
Can I try it before it is permanent? For anything this size, wearing a provisional for a few weeks is how you find the problems while they are still cheap to fix.
Which teeth are you keeping, and how confident are you in each? Ask for the doubtful ones specifically, and what happens to the reconstruction if one of them fails.
Can this be staged? Frequently yes. A plan that has to be done in one commitment is worth a second opinion.
What does maintenance cost per year, and what fails first? Everything in this category needs servicing. A practice that has done many of these knows what breaks and roughly when.
Where we've reviewed prosthodontists.
No city has completed a review for this procedure yet. Every market is open to nomination.
Nobody is listed for this yet.
We only list dentists where the review has actually been completed. Nominate a dentist and this page becomes the first market covered.
Dentures & Reconstruction.
Are implant-supported dentures better than conventional ones?
For lower dentures, usually markedly so — a conventional lower denture has very little to hold it in place, and even two implants transform stability. For uppers the difference is smaller, because a well-made upper denture is generally more stable to begin with. The trade is cost, surgery and maintenance.
How long does full-mouth reconstruction take?
Commonly nine to eighteen months, longer if extractions, grafting or implants are involved, because healing dictates the pace. A significant part of that time is deliberately spent in provisional restorations, testing the plan before it is made permanent.
Should I keep my remaining teeth or start again?
It depends on how sound they are and where they sit, not on how many there are. Keeping teeth preserves bone and sensation and is usually preferable. But a heavily compromised tooth carrying part of a large restoration can make the whole thing fail, and that calculation should be made explicitly rather than by default.