Partial dentures
Central Austin

There’s a specific kind of patient who comes to the Grove studio for this, and they tend to know their own mouth well. They have had a partial or a fixed bridge for a long time. It served them. Lately, though, it is not behaving. It is loose. It rubs a sore spot somewhere. Some people get to where the thing spends more time out of their mouth than in it. The natural assumption is that the appliance just wore out. Sometimes that is true. More often the appliance is fine and the mouth underneath it changed.

The real explanation is usually about the bone, not the hardware. The ridge of bone that holds a partial up never really stops changing. It keeps remodeling the whole time you wear the thing, shrinking a little and reshaping itself. An old partial was molded to a ridge that has since flattened, so it no longer hugs the way it did, and the clasps that gripped your natural teeth may have loosened or those teeth may have shifted. What you end up with is a partial that fits a mouth you used to have. Rebuilding it to the mouth you have now is the fix. With digital impressions we capture the current shape exactly, and the new partial seats against today’s ridge and today’s teeth. People who have spent a couple years adjusting to a sloppy fit are often a little stunned at how secure a properly remade one feels.

For patients near the 38th Street medical district, Rosedale, and Allandale, this is a quality decision more than a price one, and we treat it that way. We’ll also tell you honestly if yours just needs a reline rather than a full remake, because not every dated partial needs to be replaced. The studio sits at The Grove at Shoal Creek, near Central Market on North Lamar, with easy parking off Bull Creek Road.