Medicine: False Teeth

Losing home-grown teeth and getting store ones is distressing to sensitive people. They chiefly dread 1 ) encountering friends and business associates while they are in toothless condition; 2) having their new teeth change their facial appearance. Nowadays good dentists, with patience and ingenuity, allay such apprehensions. Last week Dr. Oswald M. Dresen of Marquette University Dental School, addressing the American Dental Association convened in Cleveland, observed that many prosthodontists now ask their patients for snapshots. If a patient has no good picture of himself, said Dr. Dresen, the dentist is likely to turn portrait photographer and take some himself. Purpose: to help the dentist recreate the patient’s facial expression as nearly as possible. Besides photography, several other techniques are in use. One is to make shadow records of the profile ; another is to take facial measurements with an instrument called the dento-profile scale; another is “facial moulage,” a life mask.

When teeth are pulled, the vacant gums shrink slowly; months elapse before the absorption of bone is complete and the tissues are stabilized. Therefore dentists used to wait six months to a year before fitting false teeth. During the interval, the cheeks and lips caved in, the chewing muscles were weakened. The victim could hardly eat or talk, was constantly uncomfortable and embarrassed.

In recent years it has become general practice to fit the patient with temporary plates almost immediately after his teeth are out. Then he can eat, talk, face the world with a smile. Within the year, he pays one or more visits to the dentist, for “rebasing” or permanent fit.