Bridge (dentistry)
| Bridge (dentistry) | |
|---|---|
| Intervention | |
| ICD-9-CM | 23.42-23.43 |
| MeSH | D003829 |
A bridge is a fixed dental restoration (a fixed dental prosthesis) used to replace a missing tooth (or several teeth) by joining an artificial tooth permanently to adjacent teeth or dental implants.
Types of bridges may vary, depending upon how they are fabricated and the way they anchor to the adjacent teeth. Conventionally, bridges are made using the indirect method of restoration. However, bridges can be fabricated directly in the mouth using such materials as composite resin.
A bridge is fabricated by reducing the teeth on either side of the missing tooth or teeth by a preparation pattern determined by the location of the teeth and by the material from which the bridge is fabricated. In other words, the abutment teeth—including portions which are otherwise perfectly healthy—are "reduced" in size using a high-speed rotary tool to accommodate the material to be used to restore the size and shape of the original teeth in a correct alignment and contact with the opposing teeth. The dimensions of the bridge are defined by Ante's Law: "The root surface area of the abutment teeth has to equal or surpass that of the teeth being replaced with pontics".
The materials used for the bridges include gold, porcelain fused to metal, or in the correct situation porcelain alone. The amount and type of reduction done to the abutment teeth varies slightly with the different materials used. The recipient of such a bridge must be careful to clean well under this prosthesis.
When restoring an edentulous space with a fixed partial denture that will crown the teeth adjacent to the space and bridge the gap with a pontic, or "dummy tooth", the restoration is referred to as a bridge. Besides all of the preceding information that concerns single-unit crowns, bridges possess a few additional considerations when it comes to case selection and treatment planning, tooth preparation and restoration fabrication.
When a single tooth requires a crown, the prosthetic crown will in most instances rest upon whatever tooth structure was originally supporting the crown of the natural tooth. However, when restoring an edentulous (without teeth) area with a bridge, the bridge is almost always restoring more teeth than there are root structures to support, for instance a 5-tooth bridge supported on three abutment teeth.
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