Hands holding an extracted tooth with visible blood and roots.

Teeth Replacement Methods

Teeth Replacement Methods service ensures quality care, advanced treatment options, and a comfortable patient experience.

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All The Ways To Replace Teeth

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Teeth replacement options are growing steadily year on year. New tooth materials, techniques, and technology are all adding to the choices available for replacement teeth.

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Teeth Replacement Options

Whether you have one tooth, a few teeth, or even a whole jaw missing, your choice will include thoughts of comfort, budget, and lasting value. Firstly, some things to bear in mind.

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We Can Always Help

Your circumstances will affect all of these choices, but we at Winning Smiles Dental Clinic are confident that for nearly everybody we see there is a solution.

Even if you have been told before that nothing can be done, we almost always can help restore the smile. Moreover, our techniques are almost certain to provide a way for you to walk out with replacement teeth on clinic day.

Before you can make any final decisions, you will always need a scan.

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It's Ok To Be Nervous

We have practised pain management in our dentistry since the turn of the century. This is the first step towards making our patients as comfortable as possible.

However, patients who need teeth replacement can be more nervous than anyone. This can partly be because of a fear of dentistry, which people have avoided in the past, resulting in the need for more work.

Our team is very sympathetic, and we probably know as much as any of our nervous patients, as we have worked with nerves many times before. Often, it is as simple as taking the time to talk through what will happen and what to expect. A smile or two goes a long way.

Please look at our dental phobia reviews to see what nervous patients have experienced. It feels great afterwards.

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Dentures

Dentures are removable teeth (also known as ‘false teeth’). Not everyone realises that they can be used to replace single teeth as well as many teeth.

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Dentures Are For You If:

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You need teeth replaced quickly (48 hours for emergencies)

You have old dentures which are loose, but you got on well with them when they fitted.

You don’t mind having bulky teeth in the mouth.

You are happy taking them out to clean after meals.

You are happy to leave your teeth out overnight.

You are looking for the most economical tooth replacement treatment.

Bridges

Dental bridges have been around for 100 years. Until dental implants came along, dental bridges were considered the gold standard treatment for the replacement of single teeth or a number of teeth.

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Bridges May Be The Treatment For You If:

You have sound teeth to attach to – usually either side of a gap.

You have crowns on either side of a gap anyway.

You are replacing an old bridge that has given good service over a long period.

Your bone is not suitable for dental implants.

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Advantages

Can achieve excellent aesthetic results
Long-lived (10 years possible)
Feel like real teeth
Quick procedure- bridges can be completed in 2 weeks
Fixed in place so they don’t move around (but not removable like dentures)
Less expensive than implants

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Disadvantages

Requires solid teeth to fix the bridge to

Bridge support teeth have to be drilled down to make room for the bridge.

Bridge support teeth. They will often fail in the long term because of the extra strain on them imparted by the bridge (5 yrs +)

Not suitable for replacing more than two teeth in a row

Not possible if a large number of teeth are missing

Not possible if teeth are missing, as they do not have a solid tooth behind them to act as a back bridge support

Much more expensive than dentures

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We Also Do Temporary Bridges

This is a subspecies of bridges called ‘Maryland’ or ‘Rochette’ bridge. These bridges are suitable for only a single tooth and are glued onto the next-door tooth.

They make excellent fixed ‘temporary’ teeth but will only last a few months, especially if they are used as temporary back teeth.

These bridges do not require drilling of the next-door tooth as they simply glue on. However, they are prone to dislodging, and we only use them as temporaries.

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Dental Implants

Titanium implants are now routinely used to replace missing teeth.

A minor surgical procedure is undertaken to gently screw a titanium implant into the bone where a tooth is missing. We do this using local anaesthetic, and it is gentler than a tooth extraction. We can provide sedation for this treatment if you wish. We offer oral sedation free of charge.

The titanium post needs to be left for a short time for the bone and gum to heal around it before it can be used to support a new tooth on top of it.

Once that happens, the titanium becomes one with the bone around it and is not visible when the patient smiles.

Dental implants can replace one, a few, or all the teeth in the mouth. If many teeth need to be replaced with implants, then we do not put an implant in for every tooth that is missing. Instead, we fabricate bridges that fix onto the implants so that each implant supports more than one tooth.

Dental implants can also be used to secure dentures in place. These are called ‘implant retained dentures‘ – super dentures that can be used to present the World News without fear of them falling out, and equally at home chewing through a juicy steak!

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Advantages

Versatile – can be used to replace one tooth, two teeth, or a whole mouth.

Aesthetics are excellent. They look like real teeth.

No drilling of next-door teeth required

Stand-alone – Implants do not rely on the patient’s own teeth to secure them, so they actually relieve the load on remaining teeth. This avoids potential issues with bridges and dentures as the healthy teeth are left alone.