What are Dental Bridges?

As soon as one of your teeth is pulled out from your mouth, you can’t help but frown. That’s quite understandable since tooth loss can make your simple life very challenging. When you suffer from a missing tooth, you can’t act naturally around your friends because you don’t want to risk exposing your physical defect. You also can’t share jokes and stories with the apple of your eye due to your inability to speak clearly. To make matters worse, you have a very big chance of going completely toothless with the tendency of your remaining real teeth to unnecessarily shift to the vacant spot in your mouth. Fortunately, you can still save yourself from all of these horrible possibilities with the aid of a bridge.

To fully understand what a bridge is, you may refer to some of the facts that we have outlined below.

Definition of a bridge
A bridge is a fixed dental restoration that consists of two crowns and an artificial tooth between the crowns known as a pontic. The pontic fills the spot that your missing tooth vacated, while the crowns cover the teeth on both sides of the gap to provide support for the pontic.

Steps involved in getting a bridge
Getting a bridge entails two visits to your dentist’s office. During your first appointment, your dentist numbs your adjacent teeth and trims them down in order for them to properly accommodate the bridge. Once your dentist finishes shaping your adjacent teeth, he takes impressions of them and the gap before covering them with a temporary bridge. You then have to give your dentist around two weeks to construct your permanent bridge. During your second appointment, your dentist removes the temporary bridge and checks to see whether the permanent bridge fits the adjacent teeth and gap properly. If there’s nothing wrong with how the permanent bridge fits, your dentist cements it permanently in place.

Taking care of a bridge
In taking care of a bridge, you have to brush and floss your teeth regularly, visit your dentist every once in a while, and stick to a nutritional diet.

If you want to learn more about bridges, you may call us at 317-597-8748 to schedule an appointment with Indiana’s top cosmetic dentist, Dr. David Smith.