TOOTH SUPPORTED OVERDENTURE

It is well recognized that the presence of teeth helps maintain the residual alveolar ridge integrity. It appears that the presence of a healthy periodontal ligament maintains alveolar ridge morphology. In the past the extraction of entire dentition with complete denture replacements used to be promoted as an inexpensive and permanent solution for oral health care. The legacy of this approach has become a major oral morphological problem: advanced residual ridge resorption (RRR). Ongoing and frequently rapid reduction in edentulous ridge size appears to be multifactorial. However, clinical experience and documented research have underscored the merits of retaining natural teeth to serve as abutment under complete dentures or distal extension areas of removable partial dentures. The premise is that occlusal forces of a functional and parafunctional nature that exert an adverse influence on denture-supporting tissues need to be reduced and that attempts to clinically address this problem are an important part of the RRR paradigm that the dentist can control. Thus we have the technique of designing overdenture or tooth/teeth-supported complete dentures. The retained teeth abutments may be few or numerous, coronally modified or restored and frequently endodontically treated. The objective is to distribute stress concentration between retained teeth abutments and denture-supporting tissues. An overdenture enables utilization of the advances in periodontal and endodontic therapy in conjunction with a greatly reduced crown-to-root ratio to give a viable alternative to treatment. Even hyper mobile teeth following periodontal therapy have been shown to make excellent abutments for an overdenture.