Physical lock of gaskets surrounding natural teeth

Abstract

As known, comfortable, yieldable elastomeric gasket liners are used to couple a prosthetic denture to an individual's natural tooth. The gasket liners are generally affixed to the prosthetic denture by chemical bonding agents. The gasket liners are exposed to shearing and separating forces whenever the prosthetic denture is withdrawn or inserted into position for use. As known, the bonding agents fail to adequately maintain contact between the yieldable elastomeric gasket liners and a prosthetic denture. Repair or replacement of a gasket liner is thereby required, necessitating loss of use and repair. The invention relates to an improved prosthetic denture for mechanically and physically locking a yieldable elastomeric gasket liner to the interior aperture walls of the prosthetic denture. The invention includes a prosthetic denture having grooves which encircle the interior surfaces surrounding an aperture of a prosthetic denture. The grooves provide a mechanical locking mechanism which in conjunction with a chemical bonding agent, deters separation between a gasket liner and the interior aperture walls of a prosthetic denture during removal from and insertion of the denture into a mouth.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.