Missing teeth are a big deal healthwise because as soon as you lose a tooth, two things start to change. First, your bone starts to melt away or resorb from the area where your tooth root was. Second, the neighboring teeth start to shift and lean in to fill the space.

Both bone loss and shifting cause complications for future dental work. Bone loss alone speeds aging as it causes the face to sink in and the jaws to lose their ability to retain artificial teeth.

What If You Could Solve Missing Teeth Problems?

Dental Bridges effectively eliminate three of four problems that result from losing a tooth. A bridge provides a life-like, beautiful tooth replacement in place of the missing tooth. A bridge stops the neighboring teeth from shifting, and a bridge provides a functional tooth replacement for chewing. For the years before dental implants, bridges were the gold standard for replacing a single missing tooth and they remain a viable solution for many people.

Dental Bridges Are Great BUT They Aren’t BEST

Bridges lost their place as the best solution for missing teeth for four reasons.

1. They only solve three of four missing teeth problems – Bridges don’t stop bone loss.
2. Bridges are not a permanent solution. They have to be replaced every 10-15 years.
3. Bridges are a pain to maintain because they require special flossing techniques and tools.
4. Bridges require drilling down the neighboring teeth to serve as anchor crowns for the bridge. If these teeth are healthy, it is NOT ideal to have to drill them down.

If Bridges Aren’t Best, Why Do We Use Them?

A bridge may not be as ideal as an implant, but they’re an excellent treatment if the neighboring teeth DO need crowns. In this case, a bridge will be a cost effective way of treating decay, filling a gap, providing a new tooth that chews, and stopping teeth from shifting and all four of those things are very important.

If Bridging your tooth gap isn’t Best, What Is?

Bridges were the best dentistry had to offer until DENTAL IMPLANTS were introduced. Why are implants better? It’s pretty simple really…

Bridges fix three of the four problems that missing teeth cause. Implants solve all four problems: the cosmetic problem, the bone loss problem, the chewing problem and the tooth shifting problem. An implant solves these problems because it actually replaces the missing tooth with a whole new ‘tooth’ – root and all. This new implant root stops bone loss. It fills the space so that shifting isn’t possible and it is a beautiful lifelike tooth. No bone loss also means no gum loss or compromised cosmetics.