The Gerber articulator and system of full denture construction.

Introduction Full dentures should restore the patient's appearance, allow him to masticate his food efficiently and speak naturally. Accordingly, dentures must be stable in use with good adaptation to the underlying tissues and be in harmony with the temporomandibular joints. Whist all the factors governing alveolar bone resorption are not fully known, most authorities agree that unstable dentures are certainly more destructive than stable ones. The Gerber system has as its main objective the preservation of denture supporting tissues by making the dentures as stable as possible during function. An impression technique is used which produces a closer adaptation of the mucosa to the underlying alveolar bone and which establishes at the outset the correct peripheral shape of future dentures. Craddock (1949) observed that Christensen's method of determining the angle of the sagittal condylar path is unreliable and for this reason Gerber prefers to use a modified version of the kinematic face bow, originally designed by Spreng. Simple styli and tracing plate apparatus enables a reliable intra-oral Gothic arch tracing method of locating centric occlusion to be used with conventional wax and shellac occlusal blacks. Like Fish (1952), Gerber is concerned that the " polished surfaces " of dentures should be shaped so that the buccinator muscle and the muscles of the lips and cheeks will act on prepared areas of the denture to increase stability.