A bridge is a fixed dental restoration (a fixed dental prosthesis) used to replace one or more missing tooth by joining an artificial tooth definitively to adjacent teeth or dental implants.

A bridge will span the area where teeth are missing. They are attached to the natural teeth or implants that surround this space. The natural teeth or implants which support the bridge are called abutments. Depending on the type of bridge, natural abutment teeth may be reduced in size to accommodate the bridge to fit over them. An impression will be taken of the abutment tooth or implant and space to provide a mould to create the bridge. Using this, the bridge is then fabricated in a dental laboratory.

A bridge is made up of two or more crowns for the teeth on either side of the gap — these two or more anchoring teeth are called abutment teeth — and a false tooth/teeth in between. These false teeth are called pontics and can be made from gold, alloys, porcelain, or a combination of these materials. Dental bridges are supported by natural teeth or implants.

What Are the Benefits of Dental Bridges?

Bridges can:

• Restore your smile
• Restore the ability to properly chew and speak
• Maintain the shape of your face
• Distribute the forces in your bite properly by replacing missing teeth
• Prevent remaining teeth from drifting out of position

What Is the Process for Getting a Dental Bridge?

During the first visit for getting a dental bridge, the abutment teeth are prepared. Preparation involves recontouring these teeth by removing a portion of enamel to allow room for a crown to be placed over them. Next, impressions of the teeth are made, which serve as a model from which the bridge, pontic, and crowns will be made by a dental lab. Your dentist will make a temporary bridge to wear to protect the exposed teeth and gums while the bridge is being made.

During the second visit, your temporary bridge will be removed and the new porcelain or metal bridge will be checked and adjusted, as necessary, to achieve a proper fit. Multiple visits may be required to check the fit of the metal framework and bite. This is dependent on each individual’s case. If the dental bridge is a fixed bridge, your dentist may temporarily cement it in place for a couple of weeks to make sure it is fitting properly. After a couple weeks, the bridge is cemented into place.

How Long Do Dental Bridges Last?

Dental bridges can last five to 15 years and even longer. With good oral hygiene and regular checkups, it is not unusual for the life span of a fixed bridge to be over 10 years.

Will the Dental Bridge Change How I Speak?

It can be difficult to speak clearly when teeth are missing. Wearing a dental bridge with the anterior teeth in their proper relationship will help you speak properly.

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A crown, sometimes known as dental cap, is a type of dental restoration which completely caps or encircles a tooth or dental implant. Crowns are often needed when a large cavity threatens the ongoing health of a tooth. They are typically bonded to the tooth using a dental cement. Crowns can be made from many materials, which are usually fabricated using indirect methods. Crowns are often used to improve the strength or appearance of teeth. While inarguably beneficial to dental health, the procedure and materials can be relatively expensive.

The most common method of crowning a tooth involves using a dental impression of a prepared tooth by a dentist to fabricate the crown outside of the mouth. The crown can then be inserted at a subsequent dental appointment. Using this indirect method of tooth restoration allows use of strong restorative materials requiring time-consuming fabrication methods requiring intense heat, such as casting metal or firing porcelain which would not be possible to complete inside the mouth. Because of the expansion properties, the relatively similar material costs, and the cosmetic benefit, many patients choose to have their crown fabricated with gold.

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Examining the teeth

During your routine checkup, we will have a look at any problem areas in your mouth. A metal probe with a small angled mirror will be used, which will help them see behind and between teeth and gums, as well as check for the softening of tooth enamel and dentin.

Dentist will also be on the lookout for the swelling of gums in any areas, mouth sores, and redness. Finally, they will measure your mouth’s periodontal pockets, which are the spaces between the top of the gum line and where the gum tissues firmly attaches to the tooth. Ideally, this pocket should only be between one and three millimeters deep, however deeper pockets can be a sign of gum disease and thus should be closely monitored.

Dental x-rays

The last thing to do is take x-ray pictures of your mouth so the dentist can see if there are any issues below the mouth’s surface. This involves biting down on a piece of specially designed plastic while an x-ray imaging machine is placed against your cheek. The resulting image will show the visible parts of your teeth as well as the roots below the gum line and your jaw bones, allowing your dentist to see exactly what is happening in your mouth and assign your oral care as needed.

We recommends digital x-rays, which emit up to 90% less radiation, allow for easy storage, and take less time than traditional machines – which means shorter, more convenient, and safer visits for you!

The Dentist will use your dental x-rays to see if there is any loss of bone, fractures, or any other abnormality below your visible gum line before moving on to look for issues with jaw alignment, teeth grinding, and oral cancer.

Generally, your dentist will feel your jaw bones from outside of your mouth while you bite down to ensure that your bite is smooth, aligned, and there is no clicking or popping from your jaw joints. They will also inspect the grooves of your teeth to see if any of them have been cracked or smoothed down due to grinding or jaw clenching. Finally, your dentist will gently feel behind your jaw and your neck to see if there are any signs of oral cancer.

Once all of this is done, your dentist should have a full understanding of what your oral health needs are, and will be able to prescribe any necessary treatments to prevent or treat your issues.

Results and advice

After the dental exam is complete, your dentist will let you know exactly what is going on in your mouth and will advise you about next steps. Sometimes this involves scheduling another dental appointment for a procedure while other times your dentist will give you advice about what you can do at home to better your oral health. It is extremely important that you listen to this advice and put it into action as best you can to ensure that your next checkup is the best it can be.

Future appointments

The final step of the routine dental checkup is scheduling your next one for a date six months in the future. Scheduling your next appointment right away is the easiest and most effective way to ensure that you don’t forget to have your dental checkup regularly. Even if you are diligent in your personal dental care, there is no better protection against oral issues than having your mouth professionally cleaned and monitored.

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DENTURES

A denture is a removable replacement for missing teeth and surrounding tissues. Two types of dentures are available — complete and partial dentures. Complete dentures are used when all the teeth are missing, while partial dentures are used when some natural teeth remain.

Complete Dentures

Complete dentures can be either “conventional” or “immediate.” Made after the teeth have been removed and the gum tissue has begun to heal, a conventional denture is ready for placement in the mouth about eight to 12 weeks after the teeth have been removed.

Unlike conventional dentures, immediate dentures are made in advance and can be positioned as soon as the teeth are removed. As a result, the wearer does not have to be without teeth during the healing period. However, bones and gums shrink over time, especially during the healing period following tooth removal. Therefore a disadvantage of immediate dentures compared with conventional dentures is that they require more adjustments to fit properly during the healing process and generally should only be considered a temporary solution until conventional dentures can be made.

Partial Dentures

A removable partial denture or bridge usually consists of replacement teeth attached to a pink or gum-colored plastic base, which is sometimes connected by metal framework that holds the denture in place in the mouth. Partial dentures are used when one or more natural teeth remain in the upper or lower jaw. A fixed bridge replaces one or more teeth by placing crowns on the teeth on either side of the space and attaching artificial teeth to them. This “bridge” is then cemented into place. Not only does a partial denture fill in the spaces created by missing teeth, it prevents other teeth from changing position. A precision partial denture is removable and has internal attachments rather than clasps that attach to the adjacent crowns. This is a more natural-looking appliance.

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Teeth naturally discolour over time and with age. Discolouration may also occur due to exposure to tea, coffee, red wine, tobacco and certain foods, childhood illnesses, medications and physical trauma.

To whiten the natural tooth shade, bleaching is suggested. It is a common procedure in cosmetic dentistry, and a number of different techniques are used by dental professionals.

Cheaper and convenient take home teeth whitening kit. On your first visit – one of our Dentists takes an alginate impression to make a custom dental tray. Once this process is finished the impression is sent to labarotary. Within days, your complete whitening kit will be ready to be collected. Your kit contains two new custom- made trays (one for the top teeth and one for the bottom), syringes of whitening gel and easy-to- follow instructions. Once home, apply a small drop of gel inside each tooth impression in your two trays, place on your teeth, then relax over the next few hours. After this procedure, remove and rinse your trays, and brush your teeth. Repeat this over the next week or two until you achieve the level of whitening you desire.

What is a Cleaning and Polish?

Gum disease is often caused by a build up of plaque bacteria, the best way to remove this is by twice daily tooth brushing. But no matter how well you clean your teeth there will always be hard to reach areas that are tricky to keep clean. In these areas, plaque bacteria can accumulate and may eventually mineralise to form a tough, crusty deposit called calculus or tartar, which is impossible to remove by brushing alone. If not removed, more plaque can build up around the tooth and potentially under the gum line, leading to the progression of gum disease.

To reduce the risk of gum disease or to help stop it from becoming more serious, your dentist may recommend that you have a professional clean, called a scale and polish, to get your teeth properly clean.

What to expect at a scale and polish?

A scale and polish can be done by your dentist or hygienist.

The first ‘scrape’ stage removes the deposits of plaque and tartar. Often an ultrasound scraper is used first to get rid of the bulk of the tartar, followed by specialised hand held instruments to scrape away any stubborn remains.

The next step is to ‘polish’ the teeth to make the surface really smooth. While polishing removes stains leaving teeth bright and shiny, it is not just a cosmetic procedure. It also smoothes away minor imperfections and patches of rough texture on the teeth to protect against further plaque build up.

Your dentist will advise you how often you should have a scale and polish. It’s important to remember that professional cleaning is an addition to a good daily oral health routine, and should never replace twice daily brushing with a fluoride toothpaste.

A tooth extraction is the removal of teeth from the dental alveolus (socket) in the alveolar bone. Extractions are performed for a wide variety of reasons, but most commonly to remove teeth which have become unrestorable through tooth decay, periodontal disease or dental trauma, especially when they are associated with toothache.

Overview
If a tooth has been broken or damaged by decay, your dentist will try to fix it with a filling, crown or other dental treatment. But when there’s too much damage for the tooth to be repaired, the tooth may need to be extracted — or removed — from its socket in the bone.

TOOTH REMOVAL Procedures
There are two types of extractions:

A simple extraction – this procedure is on a tooth that can be seen in the mouth. For a simple extraction, the dentist loosens the tooth with an instrument called an elevator. Then the dentist uses forceps to remove the tooth.

A surgical extraction – this is a more complex procedure, which is used if a tooth may have broken off at the gum line or has not erupted in the mouth. The oral surgeon will make a small incision into your gum to surgically remove the broken tooth or impacted wisdom tooth.

Root canal treatment is an often straightforward procedure to relieve dental pain and save your teeth. Patients typically need a root canal when there is inflammation or infection in the roots of a tooth. During root canal treatment, the dentist carefully removes the pulp inside the tooth, cleans, disinfects and shapes the root canals, and places a filling to seal the space.

In dentistry, a veneer is a layer of material placed over a tooth, veneers improve the aesthetics of a smile and/or protect the tooth’s surface from damage. There are two main types of material used to fabricate a veneer: composite and dental porcelain. A composite veneer may be directly placed (built-up in the mouth), or indirectly fabricated by a dental technician in a dental lab, and later bonded to the tooth, typically using a resin cement such as Panavia. In contrast, a porcelain veneer may only be indirectly fabricated. Full veneer crown is described as “A restoration that covers all the coronal tooth surfaces (Mesial, Distal, Facial, Lingual and Occlusal)”. Laminate veneer, on the other hand, is a thin layer that covers only the surface of the tooth and generally used for aesthetic purposes

What is a Composite Resin (White Filling)?

A composite filling is a tooth-colored plastic and glass mixture used to restore decayed teeth. Composites are also used for cosmetic improvements of the smile by changing the color of the teeth or reshaping disfigured teeth.

How is a composite placed?   Following preparation, the dentist places the composite in layers, typically using a light specialized to harden each layer. When the process is finished, the dentist will shape the composite to fit the tooth. The dentist then polishes the composite to prevent staining and early wear.

What are the advantages of composites? Aesthetics are the main advantage of composites, since dentists can blend shades to create a color nearly identical to that of the actual tooth. Composites bond to the tooth to support the remaining tooth structure, which helps to prevent breakage and insulate the tooth from excessive temperature changes.