Someone who has one or two missing teeth and wants a reasonably secure and semi-permanent solution may benefit from bridges. The bridge is needed to help make it easier to process food, maintain the structure of the jawline and give the patient a smile to be proud of. The abutment teeth have to be healthy enough to support a crown. Generally, a good candidate for a crown will likely also be a good candidate for bridgework.
This will depend on your situation and clinical needs. A good quality restoration will take several weeks to be manufactured meaning that you will need at least two appointments several weeks apart. You have a temporary crown or bridge in the mean time. Quality work cannot be done in short spaces of time.
A crown is a whole covering, commonly made of porcelain, metal or ceramic material, that replaces the enamel layer of the tooth. It is bonded on top of a healthy rooted tooth that needs strengthening and protection. A bridge is a device that uses two crowns to fill in a gap in the smile from a missing tooth. The crowns cover the two adjacent teeth, called abutments. The center of the bridge called a pontic, is a false tooth that is designed to fit in with the rest of your smile.
Crowns and bridges are designed to look and feel as close to real teeth as possible. The porcelain caps cover the existing tooth and can be colour-matched to the shade of your surrounding natural teeth to ensure they do not look out of place in your mouth. It is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a crown or bridge and the rest of your teeth.