Nowadays it is a rarity to come across someone with very bad teeth. That was different about forty years ago.
In 1970, children of twelve years old already had an average of sixteen fillings. In 1983, one in three people aged 16 or older had dentures. People in their thirties had lost an average of ten teeth and of the rest, ten were filled and two urgently needed tinkering.
How was this possible? Dentists hardly did anything about prevention, so people brushed poorly and cavities appeared everywhere because of caries. So the dentures quickly came into play. On the Bible Belt it was even customary to give the bride-to-be a complete tooth extraction with dentures as a gift, even though there was not much wrong with the teeth yet. That saved costs and inconvenience later in life.
Preventive dentures
Rural people in particular opted radically for dentures by having healthy teeth extracted. There were clinics where this all happened within a day and in the evening you could go home on the bus with fitted dentures and all.
Former dentist Michiel Eijkman (83) tells Quest that he approached the pulling a lot more carefully and it took several weeks. “Those clinics suggested that you were free from oral care for the rest of your life. Of course that was not the case.”
Oral hygiene has progressed enormously since the 1980s. There is more fluoride in the toothpaste and people are more aware of the importance of oral care and prevention. Dentists intervened more often in gum and jaw bone inflammation (periodontitis) and implants became more fashionable. Since the 1990s, people are also increasingly going to the dental hygienist.
In 1989, half of 55-year-olds had dentures. That was quite an improvement compared to the decades before. Now only seven percent of the entire population has complete dentures. “They won’t always realize it, but people my age have really experienced a revolution in oral care,” says Eijkman.