Trevor Brooker is a registered Clinical Dental Technician working in the West End of London. The laboratory and clinic is primarily referral based with a heavy emphasis on implants, but Trevor works on the principal if he can make dentures work without implants, then that’s what he will do.
This article is to encourage patients not to accept but to educate, on basic stages and the more advanced options you have regarding dentures so you can question with confidence and hopefully get the appearance and comfort you are looking for. Trevor is seeing an increase in the number of cosmetic procedures on patients who are edentulous (none of their natural teeth remaining), either fully in both maxilla and mandible (upper and lower) jaws or edentulous in only one jaw. Some of the time all the patient needs is a new set of dentures.
If having new dentures is not achieving the full effect you the patient are looking for, then we would suggest that any other procedure you look for after the new dentures, may be less involved due to the dentures giving facial features support to any further surgical techniques pursued.
Trevor not only looks at the aesthetics but the function of the jaw as well. Sometimes the patient is feeling self-conscious not only because of the way they feel and look but because the stability, comfort and function is lacking with their old dentures and affecting their self-confidence.
The first step is to assess what the patient is currently living with how we can improve their current dental situation. On the rare occasion their needs are not dental but lie in a different field to help improve their appearance and self-confidence. As dental treatment goes the first stage is to get stable fitting bases and then establish the correct vertical face height. As a rule Trevor will use a technique called Gothic arch tracing.