No of appointments
2-3
Duration
45-90 mins
What are Dental Bridges?
When thinking about replacing missing teeth, there are a number of alternatives available. This includes dentures, dental implants and oral bridges. An oral bridge is a tooth formed fixed oral home appliance which attaches the teeth either side of the missing out on tooth/ teeth.
A bridge is a fixed replacement for a missing tooth or several teeth. The artificial tooth is anchored to your own teeth on either side, or sometimes just on one side. To make a strong and long-lasting bridge and to ensure alignment, the replacement teeth are sometimes attached to crowns which are fitted to the adjacent teeth.
There are 2 broad groups of bridges:
Resin retained
This is also known as a ‘sticky bridge’. They generally do not involve shaping of the surround teeth. A prosthetic tooth with a metal wing attached to it is bonded onto the tooth next door to fill the space.
Conventional
This involves reshaping the teeth either side of the missing tooth and having a bridge fitted over them all. The introduction of dental implants means that traditional bridges are much less popular owing to the shaping of the surrounding teeth to support them.