Now I’m not one to decry something simply because its getting old – for example, I do love old cars (as friends will testify!), but how many of us would drive a 100 year old car as everyday transport? Wouldn’t that be uneconomic, wouldn’t it damage the environment?

Just like having dental bridges fitted, as it turns out.

The costs add up

The problem is, a bridge relies totally on the teeth either side for its support, and those teeth have to be drilled down to pegs would you believe.

So, installing the dental bridge actually weakens the adjoining teeth, and then to add insult to injury, the bridge leans on them for the rest of its life…..the dental bridge is ‘parasitic’. Bad for its environment.

The extra loads that that bridge imparts means those teeth are much more likely to fail in the long term……a single tooth loss leads to having 2 or 3 teeth missing…the long term costs go up.

Hardly an elegant modern solution

People should also know that with a bridge, the bone and gum underneath continues to shrink slowly over time.

At best this leaves a ‘dip’ in the gum above the bridge tooth and at worst a black hole (gap) appears so that everyone you smile at knows exactly where your false tooth is!

Dental Implants are the answer

The humble dental implant solves all these issues: It stands alone without interfering with its neighbours.

Over and above that, our bone loves the titanium surface of an implant tooth – and once an implant is inserted under the gum and into the bone, then the bone will not shrink like it does with a bridge.

The aesthetic and cost implications of implant teeth are just too good to ignore.

Let us retire the bridge, and give it the rest it deserves.

Just the other day I had a gentleman turn up at my surgery for the first time with one of his front teeth missing. When I asked the obvious ‘what’s happened’ he said that his own dentist extracted the tooth but forgot/didn’t bother to replace it with a temporary tooth at the extraction appointment!

I have to say both myself and Victoria my assistant looked at each other and were too shocked to speak! (not for long -ed)

Now, I’ve had plenty of patients walk into my office with front teeth missing over the years but

• most frequently the tooth has been knocked out in an accident
• they walk out with a tooth in place where there was none before.

I find it utterly amazing that in the developed world in 2008 someone can walk into a dental office with a tooth (albeit a wobbly one) in place – and walk out with no tooth at all!!

Suffice to say, despite there being no time in hand to sort this problem out – we had a ‘working’ lunch – we had a new tooth built from scratch and glued into place in less than an hour.

Once the gum has healed where the tooth was extracted we will be putting an dental implant tooth in as a permanent solution.

Had the patient come to Winning Smiles, it may well have been possible to put the implant tooth in at the same time as the extraction. Unfortunately a few days late is too late, as the gum grows down into the socket making immediate implant placement impossible.
OK Rant over!