Pulling out all lower teeth

We had a patient come in asking to have all her lower teeth extracted so that she could have lower full dentures. She did the same thing on her upper jaw and was happy to get rid of her teeth because they were too troublesome to look after!

Lower dentures are very different from upper dentures because they are inherently unstable due to the presence of the tongue. A fact that many patients do not take into account. This gives rise to much unhappiness with the resulting dentures and the problem is more profound in patients that have never worn a lower denture before. Such patients will not know how to control their tongue to aid the stability of that lower full denture.

When patients are told of this problem,they would usually not go through with their original plan of removing all their lower teeth. However, there are some who insist of going ahead with the extraction of all their lower teeth. We make sure that these patients are fully aware of the consequences of their decision so that they do not end up blaming the dentist for their troublesome lower full dentures.

Some of these patients regret their decision and end up having implants placed so that they can have a more stable lower denture.