When you sustain tooth loss, the gap in your smile could lead to issues in your daily life and cause your oral health to suffer. To safeguard your smile, you need a prosthetic to fill the gap. Our Greensboro, NC, dentist’s office talks about how we can handle minor tooth loss with a natural-looking and durable dental bridge.
The Impact of Losing Natural Teeth
When you lose a tooth, this leaves behind a gap in your smile. The gap could cause embarrassment, but also allow surrounding teeth to drift from position and cause misalignment, which itself leads to tooth decay and gum disease. If you lose more than one tooth, this gap could alter your meal options and lead to issues speaking clearly too. To avoid these issues, you need to fill the gap with a lifelike dental prosthetic, such as a custom dental bridge.
Creating a Custom Dental Prosthetic
Our team will start with a consultation to carefully examine your smile with digital x-rays to assess the cause and severity of your tooth loss. We may need to treat undergoing issues like gum disease or infection before moving forward. To create your new prosthetic, we will numb the abutment teeth on each side of the gap and then gently remove structure from them to make room for crowns. We then take detailed digital images and measurements of these teeth so we can design and craft a bridge. We create them from ceramic, a material that can resist daily bite forces and pressures, and also be shaded to bend with the smile seamlessly. The finished prosthetic contains new teeth with crowns attached to one or both ends!
Attaching Your New Teeth
When your bridge is ready, we will check the fit to see if any last-minute adjustments will be necessary. We then connect the crown portions to the abutment teeth to secure your dental bridge in place. The new teeth can last 10 to 15 years on average, requiring replacement when the jaw ridge changes shape. You can keep it bright and strong with brushing and flossing, including cleaning the space between the top of the gums and the bottom of the prosthetic. If you have any questions about how we treat minor tooth loss with a dental prosthetic, then contact our team today to learn more. We can work with you to help you start 2024 on the path to a full and beautiful smile with a custom dental bridge!
Talk To Your Greensboro, NC Dentist About Tooth Replacement
We’re ready to help you enjoy good oral health again with a custom set of replacement teeth. To learn more about our approach to restorative dental care, then call our Greensboro, NC dental office at (336) 854-9270.