Of all the cosmetic dentistry options available today, why do so many people opt for dental bridges and dental crowns in Grande Prairie? Once you realize just how versatile and affordable crowns and bridges are — and how quickly you can obtain them through a dentist near you — you’ll completely understand. Bridges and crowns help patients improve the appearance of the smile and mouth and also restore a great deal of dental function that may have been lost due to tooth loss, injury, prior dental treatment or disease.
Why do dentists recommend bridges and crowns?
Crowns and bridges are regularly recommended to treat a wide and diverse range of dental issues including issues as diverse as the following:
- Missing teeth (whether with traditional crowns and bridges or implant-supported crowns and bridges)
- Decayed, broken and fractured teeth
- Chipped and cracked teeth
- Worn and weak teeth
- Uneven and misshapen teeth
- Stained and discoloured teeth when those stains and discolourations can’t be bleached or whitened away
- To reinforce a tooth treated with root canal therapy and to protect that tooth from potential reinfection
To help you to decide whether getting dental bridges and crowns near you is a good idea for restoring your dental health and improving the appearance of your smile, here’s a brief introduction to each procedure.
Dental Crowns
Crowns are hollow caps that cover a weak, damaged, vulnerable, cracked, misshapen or discoloured from the biting surface all the way down to your gum line. The caps surround the entire volume of the tooth tightly to lend it support, bind it together and seal it from any penetration by sugary substances, acids and bacteria. If you’ve undergone root canal therapy, a dentist in Grande Prairie will also recommend placing a crown once you’ve recovered from surgery to protect the tooth on an ongoing basis.
Protecting a weakened or treated tooth is not the only purpose of dental crowns near you. Crowns are also regularly placed on perfectly healthy teeth on either side of missing teeth to hold artificial teeth called pontics in place in that gap. That structure is called a dental bridge that we’ll talk more about below.
Crowns are also used to replace missing teeth in the form of dental implants. In this situation, a titanium post is implanted into your jaw. After you’ve recovered from the implant surgery, a crown is attached to that post using an abutment to fill the former gap in your jaw and restore full dental function.
Dental Bridges
A traditional dental bridge is a dental prosthetic made up of a crown on each end that slips over a healthy tooth and an artificial tooth that fills the gap left behind by missing teeth. (There is a kind of dental bridge that only uses one crown but that is less common than traditional bridges that use two crowns.) Placing a crown on your tooth or teeth to support a dental bridge requires that some material be removed from the natural teeth so that the crown will fit snugly without adding any bulk to the underlying tooth. Once a dental bridge is in place, you’ll no longer have a gap in your teeth and the teeth on either side of the original gap will be held in place to avoid them twisting or shifting into the gap in your jaw.
Just as there is an implant-supported option for dental crowns (mentioned above), bridges are available in an implant-supported format as well. Implant-supported bridges offer the advantage of not needing to rely on the strength and integrity of any natural teeth and also eliminate the need to modify any natural teeth to support the crown.
Are you missing teeth? Do you have any flawed teeth that you’d like to hide? If, like so many people, the health and appearance of your mouth and jaw could be improved, contact a dentist in Grande Prairie to find out if dental bridges and dental crowns near you could help you get a healthier and more beautiful smile.