All You Need to Know about Dental Bridging
(Part 2)
Let us discuss the types of dental bridges that are available.
The first type is the traditional bridge. A traditional bridge involves creating a set of crowns for the implants or abutment teeth on either side of the missing tooth or teeth, with a pontic or pontics in between them.
The standard bridge is the most common and available bridge type.
This is either made from ceramics or porcelain mixed with metal to provide maximum strength.
Cantilever bridges or hanging bridges only use one tooth or a set of teeth on one side of the missing gap.
This is not commonly used and often not used on molars due to its lack of support and the higher chances of its getting destroyed.
A Maryland-bonded bridge is a dental bridge type and it is made of plastic teeth and gums, porcelain mixed with metal, or pure porcelain supported by a porcelain or metal framework.
The bridge’s wings are made of porcelain or metal and often placed on just one side of this bridge type and then bonded on the existing teeth for support.
Implant-supported bridges are bridges that use implant studs and artificial abutments in order to fit the crowns on the sides of the dental bridge properly.
This bridge is common in mouths where there are no more natural teeth left, thus needing implants to assemble multiple sets of bridges to work together.
We will continue our discussion on the bridges by focusing on implant support and abutment support in our next column.