Millions of Americans are missing teeth due to gum disease, but recognizing the early warning signs can prevent this from happening. Here, we explore one such sign — bleeding gums.
When it comes to preserving your dental health, few tools are as effective as dental crowns and bridges. From protecting your existing teeth (and smile) to filling in the gaps when you lose teeth, crowns and bridges are true workhorses that give you something to really smile about.
At our practice, Plano Dental Distinction, Dr. Mohammed Mansour and our team routinely turn to dental crowns and bridges to help our patients chew, smile, and talk without skipping a beat.
While we may group dental crowns and bridges under one service, here’s a look at the very different roles they play in safeguarding your teeth and your oral health.
Each year in the United States, millions of people are outfitted with dental crowns for a wide range of reasons. A dental crown is a cap that we place over your existing tooth in order to protect, restore, and strengthen that tooth. Dental crowns are typically made from ceramic, porcelain, metal, resin, or other materials that mimic your natural teeth in coloring and strength.
To give you an idea of the many uses of a dental crown, let’s look at a few examples.
The most common role that a dental crown plays is to protect a badly damaged tooth. If we perform extensive work on one of your teeth, perhaps a root canal procedure or clearing away tooth decay, that tooth may not be able to support a filling. In these cases, we use a dental crown to cover the tooth to protect its roots.
We can also use a dental crown to cover a badly discolored or misshapen tooth, giving you a picture-perfect smile
If you’re missing a tooth and you want us to replace it with a dental implant, we use a crown to cover the implant.
Finally, dental crowns also provide extra strength to existing teeth, which allows us to firmly attach prosthetic devices, such as partial dentures or bridges.
Bridges are devices that we use to replace a missing tooth or teeth. The bridge holds pontics (replacement teeth), and we attach it to abutment teeth on either side of the gap. As we explained above, we typically cover the abutment teeth with crowns to provide added strength and stability for the bridge.
There are four types of bridges:
Bridges are more economical than implants for replacing missing teeth, but, unlike implants, we might need to replace them when they wear down.
If you have more questions about the differences between dental crowns and bridges, please don’t hesitate to contact our office in Plano, Texas, to set up an appointment.
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