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What is Edentulism
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| Edentulism is the condition of being toothless. Partial edentulism is resultant of loosing some teeth, while loss of all teeth results in complete edentulism. Edentulous people today are surviving in the face of extensive disability. These people who cannot chew properly, survive with worse health status. Life of these edentulous individuals is possibly with long stretches of hunger punctuated by a rare full meal. Therefore it becomes more imperative and necessary to aid and care for these adults who are edentulous. |
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For people, the relevance and functionality of teeth can be easily taken for granted, but a closer examination of their considerable significance will demonstrate how they are actually very important. Among other things, teeth serve to: |
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- support the lips and cheeks, providing for a fuller, more aesthetically pleasing appearance
- maintain an individual's facial height {appearance}
- along with the tongue and lips, allow for the proper pronunciation of various words in general.
- preserve and maintain the height of the alveolar ridge {bone,gums} required for proper placement of complete denture or dental implants .
- cut, grind, and otherwise chew food which is important for good general health.
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When there are no teeth present in the mouth, the natural facial height is lost and the mouth as a tendency to overclose. This causes the cheeks to exhibit a "sunken-in" appearance and wrinkle lines to form at the cheeks. Additionally, the front teeth, when present, serve to properly support the lips and provide for certain aesthetic features, Loss of muscle tone and skin elasticity due to old age, when most individuals begin to experience edentulism, tend to further increase this condition so restoration of edentulism is required.
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The teeth play a major role in speech. Some letter sounds require the lips and/or tongue to make contact with teeth for proper pronunciation of the sound, and lack of teeth will obviously affect the way in which an edentulous individual can pronounce sounds. For example, the fricative consonant sounds of the English language s, z, x, d, n, l, j, t, th, ch and sh are achieved with tongue-to-tooth contact, and the fricative f and v are achieved through lip-to-tooth contact. These sounds are very difficult to properly enunciate for the edentulous individual.
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The alveolar ridges are columns of bone that surround and anchor the teeth and run the entire length, , of both the upper{maxillary} and lower{mandibular} dental arches. The alveolar bone is unique in that it exists for the sake of the teeth that it retains; when the teeth are absent, the bone slowly reduces in width and height .
. Reduction of gum height is also accelerated by pressure on the bone; thus, long-term complete denture wearers will experience more drastic reductions to their ridges that non-denture wearers. Those individuals who do wear dentures can decrease the amount of bone loss by retaining some tooth roots in the form of overdenture abutments or have implants placed.
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Physiologically, teeth provide for greater chewing ability. They allow us to chew food thoroughly, increasing the surface area necessary to allow for the enzymes present in the saliva, as well as in the stomach and intestines, to digest our food. Chewing also allows food to be prepared into small boli that are more readily swallowed than haphazard chunks of considerable size. For those who are even partially edentulous, it may become extremely difficult to chew food efficiently enough to swallow comfortably, although this is entirely dependent upon which teeth are lost. In case of loss of posterior teeth a person tries to chew the food by anterior/front teeth which will result in loss of normal teeth to teeth contacts which is required for normal chewing process.
As a consequence of this loss of normal chewing process, reduces the intake of food resulting in various health problems mild to the extreme. Lack of certain vitamins (A, E and C) and low levels of riboflavin and thyamin can produce a variety of conditions, ranging from constipation, weight loss, arthritis and rheumatism. There are more serious conditions such as heart disease and Parkinson's disease and even to the extreme, certain types of Cancer.
Numerous studies linking edentulism with instances of disease and medical conditions have been reported. In a cross-sectional study, Hamasha and others found significant differences between edentulous and dentate individuals with respect to rates of atherosclerotic vascular disease, heart failure, ischemic heart disease and joint disease. |
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