Home » Dental Implants » Four-Implant Dental Bridge

A four-implant bridge is an excellent way to replace missing teeth. Like other bridges, it uses abutments to support and hold it in places.  Unlike other bridges, however, it does not anchor to natural teeth.  Instead, it is anchored to dental implants.  This prevents wear and tear that would otherwise affect natural teeth if they were to be used as anchors.

Implants are cylindrical objects shaped like screws at the bottom.  They are made of a titanium alloy known as Tivolloy.  The screw-like bottom allows them to be twisted into the jawbone, which will then be fooled into thinking they are tooth roots.  Porcelain crowns are then placed over the Tivolloy roots to function as the actual cosmetic teeth replacements. 

Placing a four-implant bridge after teeth have been lost will prevent a chain reaction from occurring in your mouth.  Because teeth need each other for support, they shift when a tooth is lost.  The space that opens after a tooth is extracted or gets lost in an accident causes adjacent teeth to extrude from their sockets. These teeth will become misaligned and possibly lost as well if the missing tooth is not somehow replaced in a reasonable amount of time. 

Even if teeth are not lost, you will have difficulty chewing your food, and you will possibly damage your jaw-joint, the TMJ.  Cleaning teeth that have shifted will also be more difficult, because plaque and tartar will find new places to hide from toothbrushes and dental floss.  Cavities, gum disease, and permanent bone loss may also result. 

The cost of a four-implant bridge may be a bit daunting to some, who may instead feel they could better serve their own budgets by substituting partial dentures.  There are two problems with this, however.  Dentures require you to fiddle with all sorts of clasps and metal work, and they do nothing to stop bone loss that occurs year after year in the unseen regions underneath the surfaces of gum tissue.  A partial denture is another way to solve the missing-tooth problem.

These things being considered, it is much better to ask your dentist about financing options that will make a two-implant bridge affordable to your income bracket.

Once the money has been worked out (and we have several plans that you probably qualify for—never assume the worst)—then implantation will be performed in our office in two phases. 

The first phase is called the surgical phase.  The dentist places the patient under general anesthetic and opens a small incision in the gum.  Then, he or she twists the implants into place.  A temporary crown may also be used to cover them base for the next 3-6 weeks. Once the healing phase (called osseointegration) has completed, you come back to our Houston Medical Center Office for the second phase of the process.   

The dentist takes impressions of your existing teeth and uses these to create porcelain crowns that will ultimately be used to anchor the two-implant bridge.  Porcelain is very hard and durable, and provides both a strong support to a bridge and a reliable chewing surface.  Best of all, it looks almost identical to tooth enamel when you smile.