Oklahoma City Dental Bridge

What is a Dental Bridge?

A dental bridge is a permanent treatment to replace a missing tooth. When you have a bridge put in place an artifical tooth is anchored to the two neighboring teeth. The anchor teeth are fitted with crowns. Especially if the teeth involved are in the front of the mouth, both the replacement tooth and the crowns will be made of porcelain. It typically takes two visits to complete the bridge procedure. During your first visit, Dr. Forth or Dr. Bender will prepare the teeth involved, will take an impression, and will fit you with a temporary bridge. The actual bridge will be made by a skilled ceramist in a dental laboratory. At the second visit, your permanent bridge will be placed.

The Ovate Pontic Dental Bridge Technique

If the anchor teeth and gum area are properly prepared, a dental bridge can look totally natural, and people won't be able to tell you have a falso tooth. A technique known as ovate pontic is used to shape the gum and the false tooth so that the bridge and the crowns appear to be growing out of the gum.

Teeth and gum prepared using ovate pontic technique.	Completed Bridge. The false middle tooth looks like it is growing out of the gum.

 

Why Missing Teeth Should Be Replaced

In the front of the mouth, a missing tooth won't cause much structural problem, but it will do serious damage to a person's appearance. But some people have the mistaken impression that a missing tooth in the back of the mouth isn't so important.

Actually, in some ways it is more important to replace a missing back tooth. In the back of your mouth, the teeth tend to move to fill in empty spaces. So if, for example, you are missing a lower first molar, the second molar will likely tip forward, the second premolar will tip backward, and the upper first molar will drift down. All those teeth are attempting to fill that empty space. The result is serious jaw disruption, possibly leading to TMJ disorder, chronic headaches, or eventual loss of more teeth.

 

Dental Bridges Compared to Dental Implants

There are two basic techniques for replacing a single tooth. The traditional way is with a dental bridge, as described above. The newer technique is with a dental implant.

A dental bridge can be made to be very natural looking, if done by a skilled cosmetic dentist like Dr. Forth. It is also quicker than an implant. As mentioned above, it generally takes two appointments to place a bridge, usually about two or three weeks apart. An implant generally requires healing time of several weeks, during which time you wear a temporary false tooth.

On the down side, a bridge requires that the adjacent teeth be prepared for crowns. If these teeth are in good shape, it seems a shame to grind them down to receive crowns. And then, if later you should develop a problem in one of these teeth, it is likely that the entire bridge will need to be replaced.

To read more about these advantages and disadvantages, please see our dental implant vs bridge page.