Our teeth are most important part for our facial appearance. The arrangement of teeth in arch, their color, size, shape reflects aesthetics along with personality. An Individual with round face has more rounded kind of teeth which gives more feminine appearance whereas a person with square face has more square shaped teeth which gives masculine appearance. That shows how important teeth are for our appearance.

The number of missing teeth depends upon the age and oral hygiene status of the patient. Missing teeth cause loss of function; aesthetics and also it affect personality of the individual. Complete loss of teeth is major problem for aged people. It leads to inability to have food, difficulty in speech and also loss of good appearance of face.

Various prosthodontic treatment options are available for replacement of completely missing teeth for elderly. Those are complete dentures and implant supported fixed or removable dentures. For the all these artificial teeth proper diagnosis and meticulous execution of dental treatment is required. Along with proper functioning if desirable aesthetics can be given for the prosthesis, patient will be more satisfied. For this aesthetics characterization of prosthesis is required.

Characterization is nothing but a modification of prosthesis or artificial teeth according to individuals requirements, rather it is a custom made prosthesis for particular individual which is fabricated by specialized dentist called as prosthodontist. This kind of prosthesis is easily accepted by patient because they look like natural teeth and not like artificial teeth, thus more aesthetics of prosthesis.

Simple way of making few changes for constructing personalized prosthesis:

  • Selecting proper teeth size, shape and color of teeth according to each patient’s facial appearance, tone of skin and required visibility of teeth.
  • Making gingival (gums) characterization with different shades of pink, red and brown color.
  • Making some root elevation on prosthesis as if teeth is coming out of gums feeling, same as that of natural teeth.
  • Giving some natural appearance like minor rotation or spacing in prosthesis
  • Little bit of Stains can be applied on teeth rather than full one shade white teeth.

How to get personalized or characterized denture:

  • Always ask in detail about aesthetics of prosthesis to your dentist.
  • Take help of dental surgeon and work on how much natural appearance to dentures can be achieved.
  • Always give proper consent to dentist regarding the appearance of prosthesis during trail prosthesis as later on it cannot be changed much. Specialized in the same filed are always there to work on it.     

Appearance does matter a lot. Who does not want more natural looking teeth? Or it should be the basic need for all the patient, only thing is that it is most commonly ignored.

Don’t get accustom with artificial looking denture, rather it is time to shift on more natural, good looking and personalized teeth sets.