Here in Shmitsman’s Denture Clinic, we had been providing dentures to the general public of British Columbia since 1958. As such, over the years we had fitted thousands of patients with all kinds of dentures: complete, partials, implant-supported, gasket, root supported, etc. A winglet denture is another denture solution which we had created by accumulating many years of knowledge and experience in removable prosthodontics. In cases where with prominent lingual frenum, tori, or buccal undercuts are present, and a suitable path of insertion cannot be easily obtained by an elderly patient, winglet denture comes to mind! A standard complete denture base is usually made from a high impact denture acrylic and thus can cause pain upon insertion or removal of an appliance with present prominent lingual or buccal undercuts. Moreover, such denture would often have to be relieved in the area of such undercuts in order to avoid trauma to the intraoral structures upon insertion and removal of the appliance, often retention (suction) of the appliance is sacrificed, or in simple words, a denture will be loose and will most often require constant use of adhesives. Winglet denture, be it either upper or lower, will have a flexible resin attached to the hard acrylic denture base by a specialized laboratory process involving thermoplastic nylon material and soft gasket rubber material. Such a mechanism will allow the patient to either flex or pull the rubbery joint material away from the main denture base thus allowing an easy path of insertion of the appliance, this type of denture will be “locked-in” around the undercut area, therefore tightly securing the denture in the mouth. Finally, such winglet denture will not traumatize tissues with long term use, as the rubbery gasket material is very forgiving in nature and acts as a denture cushion.
Winglet Denture’s name and technique are presently patented to Shmitsman’s Denture Clinic.
