Hello Dr. Hall,
I am asking on behalf of my mother. She is 79 and has always had very poor teeth. He dentist told her 15 years ago that she would need all her teeth out at some point. She has a dental bridge in her upper jaw but has been advised that she will need to have all the lower teeth removed and a full clippable set of false teeth implanted. She has a lot of other health issues like high blood pressure, pre-diabetic weight and is hypersensitive to soaps. She has had polymyalgia and uses cortisone cream for an undiagnosable body wide skin itchiness. She has recently had a cancerous growth removed from her nose and another rough grey blotch frozen ofc her cheek. She takes multiple meds including serdep. I’m concerned that the extensive and traumatic nature of this surgery may have a very poor outcome or even cause further infection and put her overall quality of life ar risk, or even kill her.
Are there any other options?
Kind regards,
Kate from Cape Town, South Africa
(See Dr. Hall’s answer below.)
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Kate,
I do want to be clear that, not having examined your mother, I don’t want my answer interpreted as a definitive answer for her. But one thing I am fairly confident saying is that yes, I’m sure there have to be other options. Especially when talking about replacing missing teeth, there is always more than one way to tackle the problem.
And while I don’t know the condition of your mother’s teeth, I do get the feeling from you that there isn’t a lot of compassion from the dentist recommending this treatment. You’re listing a number of ways in which your mother is medically compromised and they’re wanting to do a fairly aggressive treatment plan. And the fact that they didn’t give you an option of a removable denture (which would clearly be an option here) makes me question even the recommendation that she have all her lower teeth removed. Is the dentist thinking more about the fee that will be collected rather than the welfare of your mother?
In my opinion, there are two essential ingredients to quality dental care. Competence of the dentist is clearly required. The dentist and the other staff need to know what they are doing. But equally important is compassion. The dentist needs to care. And maybe, in this case, I would relate compassion as being more integral to quality care than competence.
Why do the lower teeth need to be removed? Why ALL of them? Knowing similar situations, it seems unlikely to me that all of a sudden they all are hopeless. If there are some strong teeth, there are options for retaining those and building a removable denture around them. Maybe none of them need to be removed. My question is, how is she getting along with those teeth? Is she eating okay?
You can maybe judge the “vibes” you are getting from the dentist. Do you sense true compassion? Or is the approach more coldly clinical. And my advice would be to get a second opinion. Without giving the second dentist any clues about what answer you are expecting, I would just listen to what is recommended. If you aren’t given an option of a removable appliance, they’re not telling you the whole story and I would question all of the recommendations.
I hope this is helpful,
Dr. Hall
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About David A. Hall
Dr. David A. Hall was one of the first 40 accredited cosmetic dentists in the world. He practiced cosmetic dentistry in Iowa, and in 1990 earned his accreditation with the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. He is now president of Infinity Dental Web, a company in Mesa, Arizona that does advanced internet marketing for dentists.