You can lose one or more teeth for a variety of reasons. The most common one is tooth decay and its complications. But injuries of all kinds also occur, so you have to say goodbye to your teeth as well.
So sooner or later the question of restoring the dentition arises in many people, and in this article we will discuss how and what you can make up for the loss of teeth.
More often than not, there are several ways to restore a extracted tooth, which vary in terms of ease of use, cost, and treatment time.
- A small removable denture for 1-2 teeth, also called a butterfly because of its appearance. It is usually made of acrylic, the same material used to make standard removable dentures, and in addition to the artificial tooth it includes hooks (metal or gum-colored). These hooks (claspers) hold the denture to the adjacent teeth.
- A bridge prosthesis. It consists of three or more crowns connected to each other. Two of them are fixed to the supporting teeth, and the rest imitate the presence of the extracted tooth. It can be metal, metal-ceramic or metal-free.
- Crown on the implant. An implant is placed in the place of the extracted tooth in the jawbone, and after the healing period, a crown is attached, which, like a bridge, can be made of different materials.
What to choose?
Each option has pros and cons.
An implant crown is undoubtedly best for several reasons:
- You don't have to grind down the neighboring teeth;
- They will not suffer from overloading with a bridge;v
- If a crown fails, you won't have to replace the entire structure or adjacent crowns, if any.
There are also disadvantages: the cost, timing of treatment and possible contraindications to implantation.
A bridge is the golden mean: the work is many times faster than with implants, it is not as financially demanding, and the bridge does not need to be removed at home to be cleaned. Plus, chewing function doesn't suffer.
Butterfly dentures are even cheaper and are often a temporary option before implantation, so that neighboring teeth do not shift toward the extracted tooth.
But it is not recommended to wear it for a long time because of the progressive atrophy of the bone tissue under the prosthesis, because only the presence of an implant can stop it. Also with this prosthesis it is most often uncomfortable to chew, it may have a certain mobility in the mouth, and in some cases it cannot be used.
