Implants give 30-yr-old a jawbone, new teeth

Chennai: Shakira gets annoyed when she recalls her troubles with traditional dentures for almost five years. They fell out while she talked, made it tough to chew and worse, often choked her.
Shakira, now 30, lost her teeth and a substantial part of her jawbone because of a condition called juvenile aggressive periodontitis.
Dentures were the first choice, but understanding her difficulties dentists soon told her to consider implants -prosthetic teeth fixed to the jawbone with titanium screws.
But that wasn't easy either because Shakira did not have enough of the upper jawbone to help doctors fix the prosthetic teeth. "Traditionally, we would graft the jawbone using the cheek bone so we could fix the implant and then prosthetic teeth. But that comes with risks because we expose the entire cheek bone.
At times, we abandon the surgery. There is delay in treatment time," said senior maxillofacial surgeon Dr Gunaseelan Rajan, medical director of Rajan Dental Hospital.
So, Dr Rajan and his team decided to use modern technology, adopted in many European countries, to simplify the surgery.
A day ahead of the surgery, doctors scanned her jaw and made a virtual stent using specialized software. Technical experts using a special polymer printed out a 3D model of the surgical stent that became a guide to anchor four zygomatic titanium implants on her cheekbone.
"The stent is discarded and the implant will act as the jawbone where a denture can be permanently fixed," he said.
The five-day process is done under anesthesia but is more precise than the conventional surgery.
"We did not have to open the cheek bone. The procedure has lesser morbidity and is a lot more comfortable for patients as it is customized to their needs," he said.
Shakira is happy too. The titanium screws in the jawbone secure the prosthetic teeth to the implant, making them feel almost normal.
"They don't wiggle or slip, as dentures did," she said, giving a broad happy smile with her new shiny white teeth.
Dr Rajan has done a similar procedure on 63-year-old Muthukrishan, who lost all his teeth due to old age.
"As of now it costs up to 6,000 more to customize these implants. Soon, we will have customized implants completely replacing dentures," he said.