Dental Bridge and Dental Crowns Advantages and Disadvantages
Crowns and most bridges are fixed prosthetic devices that are cemented onto existing teeth or dental implants. Once in place, these devices either protect an existing tooth or replace missing teeth to improve both function and aesthetics.
Advantages of Dental Crowns
Dental Crowns give a satisfactory solution to a wide range of dental difficulties. They are able to:
- Support a tooth that has been significantly damaged by decay
- Guard a tooth that has worn away from being injured further
- Protect a tooth after a root canal procedure
- Hold a severely cracked or broken tooth together
- Cover a dental implant
- Enhance the appearance of a tooth by altering its shape or color
Dental crowns are a great long-term option because they are long-lasting, which increases patient satisfaction with the treatment. Treatment with dental crowns has a great success rate with respect to each other dental rehabilitation methods or no treatment at all. This has been confirmed by many scientific studies which researched their use.
If a crown is shown the advantages absolutely outweigh the disadvantages in that a crown gives a more reliable restoration than a direct filling, and it thereby helps to restrain the breach of a tooth with large fillings and weak cusps.
Disadvantages include:
- preparation of the crown portion of the tooth
- potential sensitivity and/or need for a root canal treatment
- potential for recurrent decay
- Gum recession from crown margin
- variety in color of real teeth which will then not “match” color of the crown
- fracture of porcelain
These are some of the risks that must be accepted prior to having crown services performed. Some of these risks, such as 2, 3 and 4, may occur even if a crown is not placed.
Dental Bridge Advantages:
- Improved appearance
- Better speech
- Comfortable and natural feeling
- Increased self-esteem
- Improved oral health
- Durable with a high success rate
- Adjacent teeth can benefit from the full coverage of the bridge restoration if the adjacent teeth are in need of crowns/full-coverage restorations.
- Dental insurance coverage typically covers dental bridges more than they do implants. However, we are seeing this change and more insurance companies are covering the cost of a dental implant as well.
- Time. They are typically faster to complete than a dental implant that cannot have a crown placed immediately.
Dental Bridge Disadvantages:
- More difficult to clean than a single-tooth dental implant
- Adjacent teeth need to be prepared and reduced resulting in a permanent loss of tooth structure.
- Cost. Dental bridges can be expensive.
- Potential for complications as some teeth that are used to support the bridge may need root canal treatment following preparation, the bone support could fail, the restoration could break or the supporting teeth could develop decay/cavities. If a dental bridge fails it will need to be replaced.
- They are a life-long commitment and require ongoing maintenance and sometimes even replacement.