Problems with bridges and dentures
Conventional dentistry provides replacements for missing teeth using bridges, removable partial dentures, or full dentures. However, each of these treatment options can cause a new set of potential problems.
Animation of how a bridge is placed. Healthy teeth on each side of the missing tooth are ground down to accept a three-tooth bridge.
Bridges usually involve filing down adjacent, healthy teeth to provide a stable foundation for supporting the replacement teeth. These ground-down teeth often fail over time, resulting in additional dental problems and costs down the road.
Partial and full dentures are often uncomfortable and can be very unstable, resulting in difficulty with speech and with eating. These unnatural appliances often slip or move, and sometimes even fall out.The result can be lack of confidence, and the need to avoid many activities and social situations.One patient put it this way, With my dentures, if I didn’t have to smile, eat or talk, I was just fine. None of these traditional solutions address the problem of bone loss.
Advantages of dental implants
- Dental implants can be used to replace a single tooth, a few teeth, or all the teeth on one or both arches of your mouth.
- Implants are fixed in place and do not move. Therefore, there is no slipping or clicking as with dentures.
- Implant supported teeth are the closest thing possible to natural teeth. They look, feel and function just like your natural teeth.
- Dental implants allow you to eat all the foods you like, just as with natural teeth.
- Dental implants have proven to be reliable, with a 95% or higher success rate. The success of dental implants is supported by decades of clinical experience and hundreds of thousands of satisfied patients
- Dental implants and your new teeth can be placed without impacting other healthy teeth. This is not true with traditional bridges, which require filing down of healthy adjacent teeth to support the bridge. These filed down teeth often fail within just a few years, requiring more and expensive dental work.
- Unlike bridges or dentures, dental implants are placed into and fuse with the bone in your jaws. This not only provides stability, but prevents bone loss and atrophy that normally results from missing teeth.
- Dental implants provide a long-term solution to your dental problems, often lasting a lifetime. Traditional bridges usually must be replaced, often within five years.
- With dental implants, you avoid the potential pain and embarrassment of dentures. There is no fear of slipping or falling out, no need to avoid activities, no need to restrict what or how you eat, no wire in your mouth, no plastic on the roof of your mouth. Many people with dental implants say they just live better than they did when they had dentures.
