In my 13 years of experience working with Dentists and other clinicians to replace teeth, one question we often get asked is, “May I see a sample of what a dental bridge looks like?”.
It is a valid question yet for most Dental Clinicians, usually due to privacy concerns of patients we there may be a thin library of pictures.
However for educational purposes we were granted permission by one of our valued clients (whose identity will not be disclosed), to publish pictures of her dental bridge. Which we recently inserted in December of 2024.
Below are the pictures of her case. We did our best to obliterate her face from full view and should she decide at a later date to tell us to take this down we will respect her request.
With those concerns out of the way, here is a real life example of a cantilever (a cantilever is a 2 unit bridge). The bridge was meant to restore a missing 47 (the second molar)”. – It must be noted that for molars, due to their strength a 3 unit bridge offers more tensile strength, so in this instance special evaluations were made to proceed.
The missing tooth
So as you can see above, there is a missing tooth in the area at the bottom of the picture and that is the tooth we intended to replace.
A cast was made by the Laboritory based on impressions we took (in this instance we did not take pictures of impressions unfortunately).
As you may be able to see in the above image, the cantilever is sitting perfectly on the model. This may not always mean it will match the area it is to be placed in.
Finally the cantilever sits perfectly closing the gap and thereby preventing over eruption.
It must be noted that , the cantilever did not immediately sit on the area, but we had to make a few adjustments to ensure that there were no high spots. When doing any prosthetic work, the patient may still go home and feel that certain spots may be higher than others or that there may be a few gaps after cementing the dental bridge that allow dentin sensitivity.
As such if the patient faces any irregularities they are then encouraged to re-visit the clinic for corrective procedures.
I hope this has been useful. If you need to ask any questions related to this, please Whatsapp us through the button below.