What Happens If You Don’t Replace Missing Teeth?
Tooth loss in adults is divided into partial (when one or more teeth are missing) and total (when all teeth are missing).
Why tooth loss happens
There are three main reasons that can cause the loss of your teeth:
- Congenital tooth loss (hereditary reasons)
- Poor Oral Hygiene or negligence of tooth health, which leads to tooth extraction
- Periodontal disease and other diseases of the teeth and gums
Negative Consequences of missing teeth
Aesthetics:
- With the lack of teeth, there is often a loss of the vertical dimension of the face and the tone of the upper lip. As a result, wrinkles appear around the mouth and the face generally looks older.
- When some teeth are missing visible in the smile (e.g. central upper part), they attract so much attention that the beauty of the whole face is lost and many times a negative impression is created for the person in general.
Functionality:
Whether or not a person can function with tooth loss is different for each patient. A complete denture facilitates chewing and speech. Some people are missing a lot of teeth and do not feel that they want to replace them, while others are missing only one tooth that is valuable to them and cannot function effectively.
Biology:
- Adjacent teeth tend to half-close the gap
- Competitors outgrow this and the vertical dimension is altered
- Teeth closure changes
- Temporal-Maxillary Structure is burdened
All of the above lead to a pathological situation, where over time, even if the person wants to replace the gaps, interventions can not or should be made on teeth that would not otherwise be needed. This increases the cost, time, inconvenience of treatment and possibly the healthy tissues that are sacrificed.
Psychology:
It is a given that an incomplete denture creates a psychological burden on the person, especially when it comes to the front tooth. The self-confidence, self-esteem and often the self-esteem of the individual decreases. There are many cases where the person with missing teeth never laughs (especially in the photos) or hides his smile with his hand. Often people with total or partial tooth loss feel insecure as others treat them with contempt.
When the lack of teeth implies insufficient chewing and inability to grind food completely, then the person loses the enjoyment of food, as each meal requires extra effort and even leads to malnutrition.
Ways of dealing with missing teeth
Tooth loss is mainly treated in three ways:
- Orthodontics
- Cosmetic Dentistry: When the gaps are small and the rest of the teeth are in a favorable position, then the minimal intervention aesthetic dentistry can solve the problem. For example, in a congenital lack of lateral upper areas, the person's canines can be shaped like sectors and the smile can be corrected immediately.
- Prosthetic teeth: Complete Dentures. In cases of total tooth loss, complete dentures are usually made. Full sets of dentures look like natural teeth.
- Implants, which are posts implanted into the jaw that become a part of your jawbone and once healed, are fitted with a natural-looking prosthetic tooth.
- Bridges, which are prostheses that use teeth on either side of the gap that is created from one or more missing teeth as supports for a natural-looking prosthetic tooth to fill in the gap