Joe McElwain

Joe McElwain can bite down on rock candy now. He admits that he probably shouldn't, but after living with a full set of dentures for the last 45 years, McElwain is enjoying the freedom to eat whatever he likes.

"I can eat anything I want to, eat it better and taste it better," he says.

McElwain, a Missouri resident, rediscovered this simple pleasure two years ago after receiving a new jaw and an entire set of bottom teeth at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

After 45 years of dentures, Joe McElwain is enjoying his new permanent teeth.

McElwain lost his teeth due to severe decay when he was 15 and has lived with the inconvenience and sometimes embarrassment of dentures ever since. But, in recent years, it had become nearly impossible to wear his denture
— which is what brought McElwain to Mayo Clinic in
2004.

He met with Christopher Viozzi, D.D.S., M.D., an oral surgeon. "When I first met Joe, his lower jaw denture moved around his mouth freely and he couldn't talk or chew effectively," Viozzi said.

Dr. Viozzi discovered that because his teeth had been removed so long ago, McElwain's lower jaw bone had severely atrophied. His jaw was so weak that even a minor trauma such as a slight blow to the chin could break it.

McElwain agreed to a surgery that involved taking bone from his hip and transplanting it to his jaw through an incision under his chin. Viozzi also placed five bone implants into the lower jaw to support a new set of lower teeth. (See dental implants.)

After the surgery was complete, McElwain couldn't use his jaw for six months. He also had to eat carefully so as not to snag any food on the implants, which protruded slightly from his gums.

Metal implants placed in the jaw support new dentures.

According to McElwain, the healing time was much shorter than he'd anticipated. "It was mind baffling. When you wake up from the surgery, you don't hurt for as long as you'd think you would. You'd also think there would be so much pain, but it's not all that bad," he said.

After his mouth healed, McElwain returned to Mayo to have a new set of permanent lower teeth attached to the implants - the first permanent teeth he's had since he was a teenager.

"Regular dentures were so intrusive," he says. "Now, I don't have to get up to wash them during a meal. I can eat a whole meal and I don't have to worry. It's unreal."

McElwain said that he would advise anyone in his situation to have the same surgery, but with one caveat — "if it's done in the right place," he says. "Dr. Viozzi and his team are probably the best. They were so good to me."