Prosthodontic works are pieces made in the dental surgery, in collaboration with dental laboratories, with the ultimate aim of replacing lost dental units and improving the functionality of the appearance of the teeth still present on the arches.
Prosthetic work can be done in several ways: On natural teeth – when one or more teeth on the arch are missing, dental bridges can be bonded to the remaining neighboring teeth. However, this involves grinding the remaining teeth on the dental arches and covering them with dentures.
The disadvantage of this method is that natural, healthy teeth will be prepared.
The advantage of dental bridges is primarily of an economic nature as the application of dental implants would involve much higher costs. On dental implants – implants are the ideal method of restoring edentulous spaces of the oral cavity. This keeps the underlying bone active and prevents its resorption. However, this method is not affordable for every patient because it is considerably more expensive than conventional dental bridges. A combination of dental bridges and implants – it is correct to place prosthetic work on teeth of the same type, i.e. either natural teeth or implants. Because of the different degree of mobility (greater for natural teeth and none for implants), the use of dental bridges in this case will, over time, lead to the degradation of the natural tooth, whose mobility will increase and which will be lost in a short time.
The classic dental bridge is made by covering the remaining teeth with crowns and replacing the missing ones with a false tooth. The false tooth or teeth, also called bridgework, will be supported at both ends by crowns that are added to the natural teeth or dental implants.
When preparing natural teeth, two situations can occur:
The tooth shows destruction or has a slightly inclined position towards the edentulous gap so that during grinding the practitioner will get very close to the nerve and then it will have to be treated endodontically.
The tooth has a favorable position and does not require exaggerated preparation, so that its vitality can be preserved and root canal treatment is not necessary.
In the first situation, the tooth will be devitalized before grinding, i.e. the nerve will be removed to avoid post-grinding pain and complications.
Covering crowns can be made of Chromium-Cobalt metal, milled ceramic or pressed ceramic, metal(CrCo) covered with ceramic, zirconia covered with ceramic.
Depending on the width of the edentulous space, the teeth supporting the bridge body may be single, i.e. one on each side of the edentulous space, or multiple. Multiple supporting teeth are used when the edentulous space is larger and one tooth on each side would be insufficient to support the load of an extended bridge.
Making a dental bridge requires several treatment sessions.
If there is no need for preprosthetic preparations such as caries fillings or root canals, the teeth can be directly ground and impressed and the next session to sample the heads in the case of mixed, metal-ceramic or zirconia-ceramic bridges.
The average lifespan of dental bridges is 7 years, under proper hygiene, in which the use of mouth irrigator is paramount.
