Replacing missing teeth with dental porcelain bridge: Dr Nik

Dental Bridge is one of the options of replacing missing teeth other than doing denture or implant.

It is a fixed appliance/prosthesis which means it cannot be removed or taken out. The most important thing to look for before opting to do bridge is to have good adjacent teeth. This is because the bridge will be anchored by means of cementing it to the adjacent teeth.

To make it easy for you to understand dental bridge, let me share my latest bridge case that I just issued yesterday.

This patient had two missing teeth on her upper left side. Both her adjacent teeth (in front and behind the empty space) are good teeth. I used these two teeth as an anchor to hold the bridge.

These teeth were trimmed around and on top to make it smaller and shorter. This process is to create space for us to build teeth like structure with metal and porcelain to cover both trimmed teeth and also replacing the missing ones. These 4 porcelain teeth are joined together making it into a single unit of 4 teeth.

The bridge was fabricated in the dental laboratory and it took about 2 weeks for it to be ready. Meanwhile I placed a temporary bridge made from resin plastic to cover the trimmed teeth and replace the missing ones.

On the second visit, when the permanent bridge is ready, I removed the temporary bridge and inserted the permanent bridge. At this stage, I checked the fitting , colour and occlusion/bite. Since everything is ok, the bridge was issued and cemented with a permanent cement.

It is a painless procedure since everything is done under local anaesthesia.

If you have missing teeth or at the moment are wearing removable denture and wanted to have something fixed to replace them, do come in for a check up. Dental bridge might be a good option for you.

Dr Nik (nik@drfauziah.com)