Denture is a replacement for loss of teeth and their surrounding tissue. It is a convenient, comfortable and affordable option for everyone whose teeth are missing. Reline and Rebase dentures are types of denture repairs which not only improves dentures fitting but also help to protect them for a longer period of time. Relining and rebasing are related to oral tissue which must be suitably healthy.

What is reline and rebase?

Relining:

Reline is the process of adding new base materials to the tissue surface of a denture. It is a procedure used to re-fit the surface of the dentures. Reline can bring back the comfort, suction, stability and also help to prevent food from getting under dentures. When bone or tissue change due to shrinkage, the requirement of relining occurs.

There are two types of reline denture:

Hard reline denture: It will improve the stability of the denture during the process like;

• Soft impression materials are placed inside the surface of the denture and used to make an accurate impression on the patient’s mouth.
• Old fitting surface of the patient’s replacement teeth will be removed.
• Impression is used to fabricate a model of a new, hard acrylic denture base.

Soft reline denture: It is for patients who have sensitive gums. In this case, it uses soft and pliable materials which makes the denture more comfortable to wear. It need to be repeated in every 1-2 years and this procedure involves:

• Removing the hard plastic from fitting surface of your denture
• Impression to accurately place soft reline material on the fitting surface of denture
• Impression material over the newly-trimmed fitting surface and taking an impression of the patient ‘s mouth.

Rebasing:

Rebase is the process of replacing the denture base materials on an existing prosthesis. It improves the denture fitting and involves reprocessing or re-fitting of the denture in the laboratory by replacing the entire acrylic base with new acrylic. Rebasing procedure makes denture more stable without changing the denture teeth. Dentist recommend a rebase if:

• Base of the denture is becoming weak.
• To change patient immediate denture into permanent one
• Denture are not fitting as comfortably as they are
• Damage or broken denture

Difference between reline and rebase

Reline and rebase dentures are the denture repair. The procedure of reline and rebase are similar but the difference between reline and rebase is; Relining deals with the process of adding new base materials to the tissue surface of a denture whereas Rebasing deals with the process of replacing all the pink acrylic denture base materials. Reline provides an excellent fit and rebase procedure to be used when the denture acrylic requires denture repair.