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Front Tooth Replacement Options

Losing a front tooth can be particularly distressing, as, after all, your smile is an important part of your personality. When you cannot smile, laugh and talk freely without feeling embarrassment, it can affect your self-esteem and self-confidence. Additionally, it is always important to replace any missing tooth as its loss can affect your remaining natural teeth, decreasing their stability and allowing them to drift out of position. This, in turn, can affect your bite. Here at Spokane Family Smiles, we understand the distress caused by a missing front tooth and will provide you with compassionate and expert dental care to comfortably restore your smile.

What Are the Options for Replacing Front Teeth?

There are three possible options for replacing front teeth which are to use a flipper, to have a dental bridge, or to choose a long-lasting dental implant.

Dental Flipper

A flipper, is generally only suitable as a temporary solution. It is essentially a one tooth denture that is created for cosmetic purposes, filling in the gap in your smile while you choose a more permanent solution. Although a flipper can look quite nice, it isn’t particularly stable, and you will not be able to bite down very easily.

Dental Bridge

The second option is to have a dental bridge which is supported by the teeth adjacent to the gap. These teeth must be crowned, and the crowns are attached to a false or replacement tooth called a pontic which creates a strong and stable restoration. This is a reasonable solution for tooth loss but the adjacent teeth which are called abutment teeth must be ground down in preparation for the dental bridge to be fitted. It is necessary to remove quite a substantial part of these teeth to create sufficient room for the crowns which prevents them from looking and feeling too bulky and unnatural. If the teeth adjacent to the gap are decayed, broken down, stained or discolored and could benefit from being crowned, choosing a dental bridge could be advantageous. However, if these teeth are strong and healthy a bridge will mean that your dentist has to remove perfectly good tooth structure when reshaping these teeth. Once this tooth structure is removed it can only ever be artificially replaced.

While a dental bridge can provide a good aesthetic outcome, it’s important to remember that no dental restoration will last forever and that eventually, you will need to replace your dental bridge which will be at least a three-unit or three-tooth bridge. This is where the third solution can prove to be more cost-effective in the longer term. When you choose a dental implant, you will only be replacing the tooth that is missing so that when the time comes to replace your restoration, you will only need to budget for a single implant crown.

Dental Implant

A dental implant is the most sophisticated way to replace a missing front tooth and it can provide a highly aesthetic outcome. A single implant-supported crown looks amazingly natural because it will emerge from your gums just like a real tooth, rather than sitting on your gums which is the case with a bridge tooth or with a dental flipper. There will be no need for our dentist to reshape the adjacent teeth and often a dental implant can be the healthiest way to restore a front tooth.

(05/02/2021)
by Spokane Family Smiles

More Information: https://www.spokanefamilysmiles.com/Blog/Post/Front-Tooth-Replacement-Options

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