Hi, it’s Dr Michael Ghobrial here from Sure Dental.
Today I met a lovely new patient, Jordan, who lives in Ascot in Brisbane. She was born with some missing teeth and wanted to know what the options are for replacing her missing teeth. It’s actually a question that I get asked often. I often have people come in wanting to know what their options are around replacing where there are missing teeth. So, I thought I’d record this short video for you and describe probably the three most common ways that we can replace missing teeth.
- The first way is the traditional old denture technique where we can have an acrylic tooth that is glued onto either an acrylic frame or a metal cast. That’s where you see dentures that have little hooks around the teeth, if it’s just for replacing a couple of teeth or the big acrylic full plates that maybe your grandparents have to replace the teeth there. The benefits of the denture are often that they are the most cost-effective way to replace a tooth, but the negatives are they’re not particularly stable or retentive. People worry that they’re going to fall out. They also can rub against adjacent teeth, and it’s hard to keep the area clean. And it doesn’t look quite as natural.
- The second sort of traditional way we would replace teeth is with what we call a bridge. A dental bridge is where we attach the missing tooth to two adjacent teeth. Often that was putting crowns on those two adjacent teeth, and then the missing tooth in there. Now in cases where the adjacent teeth are a bit undermined and they would benefit with having crowns, then a bridge can sometimes be a really viable cost-effective option where you get to protect the adjacent teeth, but you also get to replace the missing tooth.
The downer with the bridge, of course, is that the whole system relies on each other. If one tooth struggles or fails or has an issue, the whole bridge has to come off, and so it is reliant on that. It is a multiple tooth solution for a one tooth problem. Obviously, the other big downer is if the adjacent teeth are perfectly fine and the dentist wants to go in and cut into these perfectly healthy teeth to make a bridge. So a bridge definitely has its place. It can be comfortable, it can look great done well. You’ve got to be careful on how you clean it to keep everything nice and clean, but it is a viable option. - The other way we replace teeth, we often will go down the road of dental implants. A dental implant is a titanium implant that will go into the jaw bone. Titanium integrates around there, and then we can attach a lifelike tooth there. The real benefit of a dental implant is that it doesn’t rely on other teeth, so it’s a one tooth solution for a one tooth problem. It is a bit easier to clean than a bridge. It is not removable like a denture, so it’s there, it looks natural and it can work really well if placed and restored very, very well.
In Jordan’s case today, she’ll be looking at getting four new molar teeth, or premolar teeth, with dental implants because we don’t want to touch her adjacent teeth.
So, that’s the three main ways that people can look at replacing their teeth. If you have any missing teeth and you want to explore the best options for you, please feel free to reach out to us at suredental.com.au. Drop us a line on our Instagram or Facebook, or give us a call on 07 3113 9698, and our friendly team will help you organise your consultation. I hope you enjoyed this video and I’ll see you at the next one.
