BRIDGES & DENTURES

A dental bridge is a fixed dental prosthetic made up of dental crowns and pontics that your dentist bonds in place to reestablish one or more lost teeth. The bridge closes the gap in your smile by filling it with a highly lifelike replacement, known as a pontic. If you’ve lost two adjacent teeth, then a bridge can be crafted with two pontics side-by-side. The supportive crowns on either side of the bridge are then bonded to the healthy teeth that still remain next to the space in your smile. Once bonded in place, the bridge will complete your smile so you can once again bite, chew, speak, and smile with full confidence.

If you’ve lost several teeth that aren’t next to each other, or all of your teeth on one or both dental arches, a dental bridge won’t suffice to replace them. Instead, your dentist can design a partial denture (for extensive tooth loss) or a full denture (for complete tooth loss) to rebuild your smile. Dentures are among the oldest forms of prosthetic dentistry, and today, they can be designed specifically according to each patient’s unique pattern and severity of tooth loss. In many cases, we can also recommend supporting your partial or full denture on a series of dental implants, which offer support for your denture highly similar to the support that roots offer your natural teeth.