Smile: You Can Have New Teeth in a Single Day

The PI Dental team gives a patient a brand-new set of lower teeth.

I think just about everyone recalls the moment they discovered that one of their beloved grandparent’s teeth were removable. Mine: A hazy image of my grandmother popping out her upper chompers and plopping them into a sea-green plastic cup as I watched, eyes bugging out of my five-year-old head, from a perch on a faux fur-covered toilet seat located somewhere in the heart of Levittown, circa 1987. My grandma did her best to turn the entire process into a stand-up comedy act, but years later I learned she felt embarrassed about her dentures, and did her best to never be seen without them.

Thankfully, in this day and age of dental implants, losing your teeth doesn’t have to lead to a life-long relationship with Poli-Grip. Fort Washington’s PI Dental‘s “Teeth in a Day” procedure can give a patient an entirely new smile within a few hours.

I had a chance to see the procedure firsthand this past Wednesday. (PI Dental trains dentists from all over the world, so the OR is equipped with a camera that runs a live feed to a flat-screen TV in the next room, giving onlookers a bird’s-eye view into the patient’s mouth.) While the actual surgery isn’t pretty (even watching fake surgeries on Grey’s Anatomy is enough to make me cringe, and the procedure I saw involved removing the entire set of lower teeth and replacing them with bright, shiny new ones), the results sure are. Many patients opt for the procedure for strictly cosmetic reasons, but others wind up at PI after chipping or losing teeth due to trauma.

Of course, getting a set of fake teeth isn’t cheap. The price starts around $18,000 and can reach as high as $100,000, depending on what needs to be done and the type of materials used. Still, it seems like a fair price to pay considering they’re cavity-proof and allow you to eat and drink just as you normally would (dentures cover the palate, which cuts down tremendously on taste). Also, unlike dentures, dental implants keep the jaw bone from receding, which helps you stay younger-looking longer.

I hope to keep the ones that I’ve got, but, should it ever come down to it, it’s nice to know I’ll need to find a new way to traumatize my future grandkids.