Should the time come when you decide a full denture is the right choice for you, one must then decide how they will transition into a full denture.

Normally, remaining teeth are all extracted and then a healing period will be required before impression taking and fabrication visits to your dentist can begin.  This healing period will typically be from 6 to 8 weeks for individuals that heal well and whose surgery was not complicated by infection or other complications.  This healing period can be longer if a patient suffers from some illness, such as diabetes, which can prolong healing.

Since fabrication of a denture is done over five separate visits, about 1 week apart, this scenario meant that patients could be without teeth from 10 to 12 weeks under IDEAL conditions.

In order to provide patients with teeth right after surgery, the Immediate Denture was developed.  This denture is placed the day the tooth extractions occur and never requires the patient to be without teeth and their smile.

Immediate dentures are more appropriate called Transitional Dentures, as they are just something to wear as the patient transitions into a full permanent denture.  Also referred to as a healing denture, they are made with the intent that they be worn just 6 to 12 months and then replaced.

Immediate dentures are made from an impression that is taken BEFORE teeth are extracted.  From these impressions, a model is obtain and that model is ALTERED at the dental laboratory--grinding off all the remaining teeth.  This altered model is only a very rough approximation of what the mouth will look like after extractions are complete.  In addition, major bone remodeling will ensure and shinkage of the gums will occur as inflammation resolves.  As such, this type of denture requires that soft relines be placed on the inner surface of the denture and that such relines be replaced multiple times as the healing occurs in the bone and gums.

Once healing has completed, this denture must be replaced.  It purpose as a healing denture is finished.

It was once common practice to place a hard reline in such Immediate Dentures and then allow the patient to wear this time of denture as a permanent denture.  Such practice has fallen out of favor and does not comply with recommendations from professional organizations and dental specialty organizations.  Our office, to comply with standards of care, does not do hard relines in such dentures and requires a properly constructed conventional denture be constructed to preserve supporting bone and ensure firm healthy gingiva.  Both of these are required for good long-term success with a denture.

An Immediate Denture is often considered a luxury by insurers, who only allow one denture benefit every five years.  This often requires the patient to pay for this without the aid of a dental insurance benefit.  In spite of stance by insurers, Immediate Dentures are far more than just a prosthesis to give you a smile while healing.  Immediate dentures protect tender healing sites and also provide a form for the healing ridge to shape to as it remodels.  It also begins to exert forces on the healing tissue which promotes better, collagen rich, pressure bearing tissue formation.

You will probably find that these two different dentures are similar in cost, in spite of the fact the Immediate Denture only require one or two visits to fabricate.  This is due to the fact that an Immediate Denture includes the subsequent soft relines that it will require during healing.

So to summarize, patients who elect to have teeth, immediately after their extraction surgery, will require an Immediate Denture AND a Conventional Denture over the next 6 to 12 months.  If, however, you wish to go without teeth during a healing period, then only one denture is required, but a hard reline in that denture, will usually be required at some point in the year or so when more remodeling occurs.  To make sense of this, the following table comparing the two transitional paths is presented: