Initially, 2 weeks for your gums and 6 months (minimum) for your bone.

Typically the majority of healing happens in the first year after teeth are extracted. In stages, your body mends itself and our clinic accounts for that in our planning. Some people take longer to heal than others, depending on health, age, habits (such as smoking/drinking), and specialized diets. We monitor your entire healing process, and it is important to come in for these appointments throughout this time.

Typically, it adds a minimum of 3 months to healing.

This will be up to your surgeon/dentist for your healing times, and when implants can be placed. To reduce risks, and increase success we most often schedule a separate implant appointment from extraction dates.

No, not typically. Your dentures are designed to be roomier.

This is intentional as swelling, gauze, grafting, reductions, and other bone modifications can not be predicted when dentures are fabricated before surgery. This ensures the denture is not pinching your mouth during your healing process which can cause sore spots. Imagine having surgery in your tight pair of jeans versus sweatpants. After two weeks, a tissue conditioner is placed and commonly resolves many of the fit/function issues during initial healing.

It protects your gums and gives you a smile right away.

The denture helps coat and cover the healing gums in gel as they heal. They also shield the gums from getting food debris in surgery sites. It also helps keep your jaw at the right height, you feel confident being seen in public without the worry of a toothless smile, and gets you adapting to a denture.

It usually takes a lot of patience and time.

Some patients have very little to no issue adapting whereas some experience a lot of discomfort in their new teeth. Many people fall in between.
It is common to be clumsy at first and it will take a lot of time to get used to the dentures. You may initially experience, but are not limited to: biting your tongue, sore spots, uneven bite, not knowing where to bite, lisp /  trouble forming words, difficulties eating, etc. 

This is normal as your body gets used to your new teeth, and more often than not patients adapt over time. Some will have to be resolved in your next set of teeth (after healing is complete), and is why we commonly make phase two prosthetics after a year of healing.

We’ll try to adjust them and eventually look at new options.

With every option in our clinic, we outline the risks of treatment to ensure people can make the best decisions for themselves. When the outcome for treatment isn’t what we aim for, we look at what options are available to patients together. Simply put, not everyone can adapt to wearing dentures and we sometimes don’t know until patients are trying to use them (a risk that has to be understood). This is where higher levels of care (ie:  implant supported dentures) can be assessed.

All the time, we have high patient “success” rates.

We’re biased: but we see this happen all the time, especially our implant supported denture systems. At our clinic, we see so many people excel better in their dentures and implant supported dentures than they did in their natural teeth. Dentures can’t be compared to natural teeth; but as an alternative method to functionally restore the loss of teeth, a lot of our patients get to “start again” with new dentures.