See below for detailed photos and a look at Tom’s complete cosmetic process.
TMJ (jaw joint) exam proved positive with popping and clicking to his left jaw joint and he was getting stiff, tired muscles when he woke up in the morning. The initial exam confirmed that his bite was over closed. He had a lot of bone loss around all of his remaining upper teeth as well as his premolars on the lower left side. This made his teeth very loose.
TC wanted to retain as many of his natural teeth as possible. He did have good bone support around his back lower molars on both sides and one premolar on the lower right side. Unfortunately, several teeth had lost too much bone to be able to save them.
On the panoramic x-ray you can see the amount of bone loss TC has experienced. The Dr has noted the depth that he will place the implants.
Here we are doing what is called a stick bite. This helps us line up the patient’s bite and midline with their eyes. This gives us a very natural looking result.
Here we have extracted all of the upper teeth and placed five implants on the upper arch.
After treatment was completed we fitted Tom with transitional bridges to use and wear until he was finished healing.
We recommended several months healing in order to obtain optimum results. Everything looks very good and has healed nicely. At this appointment we placed his attachment locators. His final bridges will snap right on to these. We also took impressions for his final removable bridge. Tom was happy with the lower removable bridge. He thought it felt very solid and there was no rocking like he had experienced with his previous partials. His bite felt good.
This is TC with his wax try-in appointment. The teeth are set in wax and can be changed in any way before casting them in acrylic. Today TC felt that everything looked great and was very happy with how the cosmetics looked.
At this point TC had only two implants attached to the lower bridge. We added two more for a total of four. Tom stated that the bridge felt very solid and decided we should leave the 5th implant in as a sleeper in case we had any complications with any of the other implants in the future. He was thrilled that the bridge on the upper did not cover the roof of his mouth. TC was very happy with the cosmetics and fit of both the upper and lower removable bridges.
We were able to get rid of the metal clasps, provide TC with much better function and eating ability. TC no longer has metal or acrylic in the roof of his mouth. Most of all TC loves smiling now.