Dental Bridges – Houston | 77090

Ceramic Bridges for Missing Teeth 

Do you have a missing tooth? Replacing it doesn’t just protect the appearance of your smile, it also preserves the natural spacing of the other teeth throughout your mouth. When a tooth is extracted or falls out, the neighboring teeth tend to start moving and tilting out of place. This process spreads throughout your smile, affecting how your teeth bite together. As a result, irregular tooth wear or TMJ disorder may develop.

Fortunately, there are a number of options available to help our North Houston patients replace their missing teeth. Dental bridges are one of the most popular and proven methods offered.

What is a Dental Bridge?

As the name suggests, bridges connect to one tooth, span the space left by a missing tooth, and anchor onto the tooth on the other side of the gap. Each end is made of a functional crown that slips over the supporting tooth. Between them, pontic or “false” crowns, are suspended over the gums.

Bridges are ideal for replacing 1-2 missing teeth, as long as there are healthy and structurally sound teeth on either side. Until the development of dental implants, they were the preferred solution for single tooth replacement.

Cleaning Around a Bridge

It’s important to keep your supporting teeth clean each day, as bacteria will want to accumulate under the bridge, where it meets your tooth.

In addition to daily brushing, use a floss threader each day to clean under your bridge and against the supporting teeth. Tufted floss tends to work especially well. Water flossers are another great alternative and tend to be easier to use than conventional floss.

Implant Bridges

If you have several missing teeth in a row, you may want to consider an implant-supported bridge. Since traditional bridges are set on top of natural teeth, they can only fill in the space of 1-2 teeth between. But an implant bridge can be up to 4 teeth wide. As such, they’re a great alternative to wearing a removable partial denture.