TeethXpress Patient Stories
Patient Stories
Meet Gwen 
I Missed My Old Smile, Until I Got It Back!
Gwen has always been a cheerful person with a ready smile, but for a sad stretch of time she was too self-conscious to let others see her teeth. "I couldn't smile," she recalled, "or if I did and someone saw it, I was embarrassed." Gum disease had caused several of her teeth to loosen and one of her front teeth to require extraction. She opted for bridgework to replace the missing tooth. Unfortunately, this only added to her dental woes. To support the bridgework, five healthy teeth surrounding her missing tooth were filed down and capped; the caps (crowns) were attached to a false tooth that filled the gap in the front of her mouth. "I was never really happy with it," Gwen said of the bridge. "The teeth were just too big." Besides creating cosmetic problems, Gwen's bridgework also weakened the five teeth that served as supports, causing them to decay. Eating became more problematic. "I couldn't bite into a pizza and pull," Gwen said. "I had to cut everything up with a fork and knife."
After suffering with this situation for years, Gwen was delighted to learn how dental implants could, in effect, turn back time and completely restore her smile as quickly as possible. Gwen received 11 dental implants—6 in the upper jaw and 5 in the lower jaw. On that same day, temporary teeth were attached to the implants. After a healing period, she received permanent, new teeth custom-made just for her. "I had beautiful teeth before all this happened and I was always smiling," Gwen said. "I brought them in a picture of way back when, and they duplicated my teeth," she explained. "I have my teeth back, in a sense!" Since her smile was restored, her quality of life has improved greatly. "I can eat everything again!" She exclaimed with obvious delight. "I'm able to get a great, big smile on my face again and be confident about that. It's an awesome feeling!"
Meet Marc
How TeethXpress Changed My Life 
Meet Marc, an energetic 71-year-old newlywed who has a lot to smile about. This year not only brought wedding bells, but also the chance to enjoy his new life to the fullest with new teeth. For that, he is enormously grateful for the BioHorizons dental implant system.
“I’m very impressed with the whole procedure and I would highly recommend it to anyone,” Marc recently told TeethXpress magazine. “It certainly changed my life.”
Some foods he had to avoid altogether. “Things like corn that take a fair amount of pressure-I would avoid those kind of things,” he said. But the problems didn’t stop there. “Sometimes when I was using my denture I wouldn’t chew the food up properly and as a result I would tend to choke on the food,” he said. Marc’s difficulty with dentures caused him to think about his father, who lived unhappily with dentures for many years.
“My father had dentures and he hated them. He could never keep the teeth fixed properly in his mouth,” Marc said. “It’s funny because I never thought too much about it when he was complaining until I got older and was in the same situation myself.”
Finally, when Marc had lost all but 10 of his teeth, he decided it was time to seek a better solution than removable dentures. His son told him about dental implants—tiny metal posts that can support permanent, lifelike replacement teeth that function just like natural teeth. Marc wanted to learn more about this promising treatment. When he went for a consultation with an implant dentist, Marc found out that he would not need to have an individual dental implant placed for each missing tooth; only 5 implants in the lower jaw and 5 on the top would support an entire set of new teeth using TeethXpress. Marc did not immediately opt for dental implant treatment because it costs more initially than dentures. But when he considered that implants are designed to last a lifetime whereas dentures almost never do, he came to view dental implants as a sound, long-term investment in better health, comfort and emotional well-being
"I would say that it's well worth spending the money to have it done," he said. "I know it's expensive, but in the long run, dental implants are the best alternative for anyone because of the stability of the teeth and the fact that you can eat things in a normal fashion." Marc scheduled his implant surgery and looked forward to the day when he could eat the foods he liked and smile with confidence again.
On the day of the procedure, Marc's implant surgeon gave him local anesthesia to numb his mouth. That turned out to be all he needed to keep comfortable during the procedure. Marc’s last 10 failing teeth were removed, and coincidently 10 implants were placed—5 in the upper jaw and 5 in the lower jaw.Marc's implant surgeon told him that his healing would be monitored over the ensuing months to make sure the implants were integrating with his jawbone correctly. A big advantage of TeethXpress is that the implants are designed to maximize attachment of both bone cells and gum cells. This creates superb stability and is the reason why the lifelike dental crowns attached to the implants can function just like real teeth, as quickly as possible. The healing period needed for this attachment to take place varies from person to person, but usually ranges from two to three months. At that point, the implants are ready to bear the force of normal biting and chewing, and the permanent teeth can be attached. Marc will always remember the day he got his new teeth. "It was wonderful looking in the mirror," he said. "When I had no teeth at all, I looked very old. After they put the teeth in, it knocked 20 years off as far as the way I looked, it really did." Marc's son had a special surprise lined up for this momentous occasion.
"The day I had the finals put in, my son took me out to a steak dinner," Marc recalled. "It was wonderful! It felt so good to chew something of some consistency like that and find that I had no problem. It had been years since I had been able to chew foods like that. I really enjoyed it!"
Back home, the change in Marc's appearance drew compliments from friends and family. "Everyone noticed the difference for sure, how nice my smile looked," Marc said. "I smile more often now because it feels natural. Being treated with implants is probably as close to natural teeth as I can get." Marc no longer needs to avoid corn, nuts, or any other food he likes.
"I eat them now with no problem," he declared. "I don't feel any kind of pressure when I'm chewing on things; in other words, my teeth are well-supported. When I chew, they feel like my own teeth."
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