Anyone had all their teeth removed and full implants?

[FlamingoFloss]

My husband has gum disease and bone erosion. He has a couple of choices - some teeth removed and bridges and implants to support some of his teeth or the whole lot whipped out and full implants.

does anyone have any stories/experiences they could share please? Probably the best long term option is all removed but he is terrified but the first option will mean more work at a later date so trying to work out what is best for now. Thanks in advance

Until he gets his gum disease under control then any extensive and expensive dental treatment is doomed to fail quickly . Implants are more easily lost to gum disease (peri implantitis ) than your own teeth.

so first he needs to sort out factors making gum disease worse eg if he smokes or vapes he must stop , if he has poorly controlled diabetes then he must get that under control .

He should be seeing a hygienist regularly to show him how to clean effectively as bridges etc are more difficult to clean than your own teeth.

Then the despising is up to how much time money and effort he is willing to spend on his teeth. Retaining his own teeth and having bridges and implants etc means changes in cleaning and lifestyle , as well as regular maintainance and dental visits for life .

All out and implants still means maintainence and ongoing visits but less than with bridges. Implant retained dentures have best success rates and don’t require as much maintainance and are easier to clean than all on fours (implants where teeth stay in ).

So first thing is to get his mouth stable , get any painful teeth sorted and then see what cleaning , lifestyle changes he can make , what ongoing costs and maintainance he is willing to have and make the decision from there.

You need to look after an implant better than the tooth it is replacing. If there is still active periodontal disease this will be a costly and fruitless endeavour.

This is it he'll have to spend a fortune on treatment for gum disease first and probably have to get bone put in which which take many months to "set" before he can even think of getting implants otherwise the implants will simply fall out.
I have three implants and for one of them I had a sinus lift - bone put in, it took months. Then the aftercare, very regular hygienist appointments, I go every 3-4 months and it isn't cheap.

Yes i did but not implants i have a full set of pearly white dentures top and bottom.

I have six implants and I went through A LOT on this journey.

Why does he not keep the teeth he can and just have implants or bridges on the ones that are most severe?

A full mouth of implants is going to cost a fortune. And that is many many hours in the dental chair.

I find my implants quite uncomfortable. Mine are in front and I decided I could not do a denture anymore. They are not an exact replica for normal teeth. Just giving a heads up about that.

If he has bone erosion I'd check that the implants would be practical.

I had exactly what you describe, all my teeth removed and implants tops and bottom. I was quoted a lot of money to have this done in London and after A LOT of research I chose to go to Bulgaria. I went over twice over a period of 8 months and I haven't looked back since.

This was in 2010, way before the trend for turkey teeth. There was a lot of discussion about what I wanted and I opted for a completely natural look, I didn't want people to really notice the work done. The dentist who did this for me was a Bulgarian national who had trained and worked in the US for over forty years. He ended his US career teaching dental surgery at university. He returned to Bulgaria and opened his practice when he saw the demand.

Both times that I went, all the patients were from the UK and all needed drastic help like I did. My problems were due to two back to back pregnancies, I was very unwell and lost a total of five stones over the time I was pregnant. My teeth were OK going in to the first pregnancy but completely wrecked by the end of the second. My worst moment was when I bit into a banana and one of my teeth fell out.
Looking back, I'm so pleased that I chose to do what I did, my mouth felt very different initially but fifteen years later the implants feel absolutely like natural teeth. I won't lie that the process was grueling and made all the scarier for being in a different country but it was one of the best decisions I made.

@Allergycream how are you getting on with the full set? Is there anything you can’t eat now?

Im in the process of this now. So far i have had all my teeth removed . At the moment I have 2 implants (screws) in the bottom gum and i have a clip in denture. In August im having 4 implants and again I will have clip in upper denture.

I also have bone erosion. They basically find part of the bone that it can screw to. My gums are much healthier now

I had to have a couple of teeth out due to physical damage (one fell victim to pork crackling cooked by a student flatmate), the other at the front that got bashed and died but stayed out for decades.
I'd hoped for implants on both but the back one fortunately had a CAT scan which showed a nerve running too near the surface to allow the post. This is something that can’t be ascertained before the extraction. The front one, the implant specialist reckoned there had been too much bone erosion by the time I had the old tooth out.

So I reckon it’d be quite risky to have the whole lot out, as he knows he’s got gum disease and bone erosion, and I’d be mistrustful of any dentist who recommended ‘whipping them all out’.

I eat anything.
Ive had my teeth for years so im very use to them.

Ah that’s really good to know. Even Baguettes? Mine are a mess after pregnancy and chemo so I think it’s inevitable for me.

This is not the case for everyone . Most people can cope with a top full denture , but a lower full denture where there is little bone and gum to keep it in place is a very different beast and many people do not wear their lower full denture at all as they never master keeping it in place with lips and tongue and if there has been a lot of bone lost they can be uncomfortable.

As a previous poster has said a denture retained by two implants , that can be clipped in and out , is the most sucessful implant treatment and the cheapest , long term , to maintain and easiest to keep clean .

I have had patients whose dentures have broken into three pieces successfully still eat, speak and wear them and I have had patients where I’ve made beautiful dentures that have brilliant retention , yet they cannot wear them . Everyone is different .

Agree i could not wear my temporary buttom ones they were awful they practically dance in your mouth. I think 4 implants on the bottom would be better. But I only have 2.

Thera lots of things I can't eat or find it very hard to . But hopefully that will be different when my treatment is completed.

@FlamingoFloss I would definitely say it's worth looking into. But its not all roses. For some people. The healing can be different faster for some slower for others. One of my implants came out and had to be redone. Its also mlt like you see on tv . Smile on a day type stuff .

Thanks for all the replies. So we’ve seen another dentist and have a plan for 5 implants and a bone graft and an extraction of at least one tooth