Premier Dental Esthetic: Three ways to replace missing teeth.

Here are 3 ways in which I am able replace missing teeth for a few of my patients.

Missing a tooth or many teeth can be an embarrassment and/or disabling to a person, especially when a tooth is in the smile zone for people that loves to talk and smile; or in the back molar area for people that loves to eat. Either way, it's never pleasing. There are mainly 3 options in which you can pursue: Implants, Fix Bridge, or Removable denture.

Removable denture is the oldest treatment for replacing missing. This goes back to the day of George Washington who had a set of wooden teeth. Probably that's the reason you never saw a picture of him smiling. Of course, dentures or partial dentures can be made very nicely that is customized to fit in the missing areas. Advantage of this treatment is that's it's the most less costly of the three. Disadvantage is that dentures need to be constantly remove to cleaned and left out over night and it can give more stress to the anchoring teeth.

Denture Case: Upper movable and lower full denture.

The other option is Fix Bridge. This treatment will require to crown the adjacent teeth and link another artificial tooth in the middle where the missing tooth was. The is a very good treatment as long as the anchoring teeth are strong and health. However, if there's neglect in cleaning, it may be very costly to replace.

Bridge Case: Old Fix Bridge replace with a more esthestic natural looking bridge.

Our third option is Dental Implants. Dental Implants have now become the standard of care with success rates over 90% in 10-year studies as opposed to 75% for fixed bridge and lower with removable dentures. Initially, it may seem more costly, but over a 10-year period it actually becomes more economical. Dental implants are also used to retain and support dentures. This improves chewing and gives people security without having to deal with adhesives for loose dentures. Almost anyone can have an implant; smokers, diabetics and people taking some forms of fosamax should be cautious.

Implant Case