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My wife has worn full dentures for almost seventeen years. She was 45 when her teeth were pulled. Her immediate dentures, made by the same private general dentist, lasted six years with two hard relines and a couple repairs. Her second set (known as regular or permanent dentures) was made at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry. After ten years of use the surface texture on the molars was wearing away so she returned to the dental school last February for her third set of dentures. Both sets of dentures from the dental school are superb in quality and fit and her smile is incredibly glamorous. Interestingly, her older set and new set fit almost precisely the same, showing that her gums did not deteriorate in the past ten years. She was regular about returning to the dental school for annual checkups for her second dentures; they never found any problems or made any changes to them.

Students entering dental school must have a bachelor degree and the admission requirements are quite strenuous and competitive. Interestingly they are still called undergraduates during their four years in dental school, even though they will receive a doctor’s degree upon completion of the curriculum. The first year and half are book learning. The second semester of the second year is a mixture of more book learning, practicing dental procedures on each other, and their first time to work with real patients, through the design and construction of full dentures. Dental schools start students off with their first contact with real patients through making dentures since they can not do serious harm to them in this process. This is the only set of full dentures that dental students make during their dental education.

The third and four years are devoted to mastering the basic skills required of dentists – drilling, filling, and pulling teeth, etc. through working on patients. This dental school also has graduate programs in the various specialties of dentistry. A prosthodontist graduate student could have made my wife’s dentures but the school was desperate for patients for their undergraduate students so she complied with their pleas.

The second semester second year dental students work with their denture patients one afternoon per week. The rest of their academic program that semester is more classroom studies and laboratory work. This dental school is unable to recruit enough toothless patients so they assign multiple students to each patient. A team of three students worked on my wife this time and shared the duties. Obviously the students do not get as much experience as if they did it all. In addition, the supervising professor (a board-certified prosthodontist) did the critical steps. No wonder general dentists often do not know how to make dentures!

To participate in this educational program prospective patients must have no natural teeth and their gums must be fully healed. The cost is $720. This program runs from February to the end of April or early May, depending on how many reworks the students must do. Enrollment in this program starts in November. All dental schools have similar denture programs. Patients must understand that the purpose of this program is not to serve the public, but to educate future dentists. Patients are there for the benefit of the students.

The work is done at this dental school in a large room with 50 semiprivate fully equipped cubicles. Each patient and team of students is assigned a cubicle. The professors closely supervise six teams each. The patients are treated with utmost respect and dignity (part of the students’ grades) and they usually become fast friends with their student dentists. The professors require absolute perfection in their work and “good enough” is not acceptable. The short-cuts and skipped steps often done by private dentists are not allowed and result in instant course failure. If a student makes an uncorrectable error in the process of making the dentures then he or she has to start over regardless of how far the process has progressed. The patients are assured that at the end of the program they will receive dentures made with the highest quality components and craftsmanship, having perfect fit and normal oral functionality, and a natural and attractive appearance.

One final point before I close. Several years ago a young teenage girl came up to my wife at our church and told her she had the most beautiful and perfect smile she had ever seen. She wanted to know if she had had orthodontic treatment earlier. My wife gave her the honest, but very misleading answer of yes. A month later the girl showed my wife her new braces. My wife let the girl continue living in blissful ignorance.

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