Cleaning Dental Appliances for Oral Hygiene

Video Transcript

"Hi I’m Dr. Scott Chandler with Silver Creek Dental on behalf of Expert Village.com. This clip is about cleaning and maintaining your removable partial denture. In this example we have what is called a valveplast partial denture. It does not have any metal clasps. What you do is remove the denture from your mouth. Ensure to brush all around your teeth and gums and everything that you have remaining. You don’t want to lose any more teeth. You take your partial denture and just a little bit of toothpaste on a toothbrush; nothing very abrasive. Don’t use a whitening tooth paste. Those tend to be little too abrasive and you take the toothbrush and you clean all underneath in your denture around the clasps and all the edges. Be sure to brush the teeth in anywhere in between the teeth where food sticks. Now they make a special denture brush that costs a little extra. A regular manual toothbrush works just fine in most cases. So you brush well around those. About once a week you want to take a few drops of Clorox bleach in a cup of water. This is kind of the poor man’s way to clean your dentures. Instead of buying those expensive denture cleaners, you just take a few drops of Clorox in water, dip your toothbrush and you just clean it a little bit with the Clorox to kill any tenacious germs that might be sticking to that thing. It is best after you clean your dentures, rinse it off and let it sit in a cup of water. You do not want to leave a removable partial denture out of water for an extended period of time or the plastic acrylic will shrink and it may not fit. Once you take the denture out and have it all cleaned up and you don’t have to wear it to bed, then go ahead and leave it out of your mouth. It is best for your gums and tissues to re-hydrate during the night and you will just have a healthier mouth if you don’t have to wear this thing to bed. So clean it good, leave it sitting in the bathroom and go off to bed."