Mini Dental Implants
That is one of the better services that we can offer. If we have a patient that comes in and wants an upper and lower denture, and it turns out to be an immediate where we remove some teeth and place the dentures in, I always tell a patient that after all the healing is done, and after we’ve made the secondary denture that’s going to fit much more intimately the lower jaw, I would suggest that we do something minimum, be a mini implant in the area, to help retain the lower denture. Because basically, that lower denture is like trying to put a size 6 foot into a size 12 boot. The tongue goes up and down, the cheeks go back and forth, the lips are up and down, and it is absolutely difficult to hold it down unless you have adhesive. As we talked about before, patients spend upwards of $1.8 billion a year on adhesive, which is a lot. And it doesn’t taste good, and it’s difficult to get out at times. So, mini implants are a very good solution if we have the right amount of bone that is present. I do not suggest that they be used in the upper jaw because the bone, the density of the bone in the upper jaw is like that of styrofoam, whereas down here in the lower jaw, in the front part, it’s like oak, which will be able to sustain that.