Segmented Dental Appliance with Continuous Wall Retention
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional dental appliances for replacing missing teeth are often cumbersome, expensive, and uncomfortable, limiting their accessibility and effectiveness for patients who cannot afford extensive dental procedures or implants.
Innovation Solution
A dental appliance with a continuous wall that engages existing teeth and provides aesthetic and functional improvements, using retentive points and over-denture attachments for secure placement, independent of the number of implants or roots, allowing for easy insertion and removal, and customizable to simulate natural teeth or gum tissue.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional removable partial dentures are used, then missing teeth are replaced, but the appliance becomes clumsy and thick covering the upper palate causing discomfort
Solution Approach 1:
The invention removes the traditional bulky denture base and palate coverage, extracting only the essential tooth replacement function. The appliance consists of individual tooth-form elements that attach directly to existing teeth or implants, eliminating the need for a continuous covering base that causes discomfort.
Solution Approach 2:
The denture is divided into separate modular tooth-form elements rather than a single continuous structure. Each tooth can be independently attached to existing teeth or implants, allowing selective placement and eliminating the need for a thick connecting base across the palate.
2Reliability
If implants are used for tooth replacement, then aesthetic and functional improvement is achieved, but the cost becomes prohibitive for many patients
Solution Approach 1:
The appliance is designed to work with multiple retention strategies including existing natural teeth, dental implants, or a combination thereof. This multi-functionality allows clinicians to select the most cost-effective retention method for each patient while achieving the same aesthetic and functional outcomes.
Solution Approach 2:
The tooth-form elements serve as intermediaries that can attach to either natural teeth or implants through standardized retention mechanisms. This intermediary design decouples the aesthetic/functional tooth replacement from the specific retention method, allowing cost-effective solutions using existing teeth when possible.
3Reliability
If conventional partial dentures are used, then missing teeth are replaced, but the appliance becomes thick and covers the upper palate
Solution Approach 1:
The invention extracts and removes the thick palate-covering base from conventional dentures, retaining only the essential tooth-form elements. This eliminates unnecessary volume while preserving the core function of replacing missing teeth.
Solution Approach 2:
By segmenting the denture into individual tooth elements rather than a continuous base, the overall volume is dramatically reduced. Each tooth element is thin and minimal, attaching only where needed without requiring a thick connecting structure across the palate.
Data Source
AI summary
An exemplary dental appliance for application to a jaw of a dental patient includes a teeth section having at least one tooth receptacle, at least one removable retention component carried by the teeth section and at least one fixed retention component adapted for attachment to the jaw of the dental patient and engaged by the at least one removable retention component.