Dental Bridge Disadvantages

Hi, everybody. This is Dr. Sasan Khodabakhsh. I wanted to shoot a little video for you today and discuss why dental bridges may not be always the best option for you if you're trying to replace a missing tooth space in your mouth. I recently had a patient come to my office who had a dental bridge done by another dentist a little bit over seven years ago, and they were already having problems with it. We took a 3D x-ray, and as you can see on this x-ray, this is the dental bridge over here. The adjacent teeth around the bridge already have decay forming under it. The general idea behind a dental bridge is that if a patient needed to have a tooth replaced in that missing space, and if there was a tooth behind it and in front of it, the dentist would often go ahead and shave down the adjacent teeth and place a big old crown to replace those three teeth. But here's the problem, dental bridges don't often last very long. As you can see, my poor patient is experiencing dental decay around that bridge. This is a very common problem with patients who get dental bridges done. It is often hard for patients to keep this area clean both around it and underneath the bridge. Over time, the bacteria makes its way underneath the bridge. And if it's not flossed or cleaned properly every day, then that bacteria can cause that decay to form. We dentists who place dental bridges, we know this fact because we see patients on a regular basis and that is one of the most common reasons of why we had the dental bridges usually replaced. And in some cases, that decay that's adjacent to that area, the whole bridge has to come off, and sometimes that tooth that was healthy at one point now has to either get a root canal therapy or has to be extracted. A patient who has a missing tooth should not spread the problems to the adjacent teeth. Instead, this patient should have gotten a single implant placed in that space to replace that tooth that was missing. And if finances were an issue at the time of the operation, the dentist could have made the patient a flipper, which is a removable device to wear until the patient could afford the optimal treatment. I hope anyone watching finds value in this. Don't let your dentist cut corners for you, especially if there's better treatment options available, and don't let your finances force you into making poor health decisions. Dental bridges don't last. Be patient, wait, and get the best option available. This has been Dr. Sasan Khodabakhsh with Summit Point Dental Implant Center. Thank you so much for watching.