How to Care for Bridges

Our skilled doctors at Elite Dental Arts can craft all kinds of artificial teeth for our patients, but to ensure that their new teeth last a lifetime, patients need to know how to care for them. Dental bridges are an important tool for repairing bite function, but because they present some unusual surfaces for plaque to accumulate on, some extra steps are required to floss them properly.

Fortunately, flossing with bridges isn’t hard; it just requires some new tools. A dental threader is a soft, needle-like device which is used to pull a strand of floss under a bridge and loop it around so the patient can grab it at both ends. The patient can then floss along the bridge and adjoining teeth in an arc-motion. There are also specialty brands of floss which have stiffened tips to allow them to be pushed under a bridge.

Implant-supported bridges may have larger empty spaces between the gum and the prosthetic structure. This allows larger bits of food to get stuck, but also allows them to be dislodged with a proxy brush. It is also becoming more common for makers of electric toothbrushes and water picks to make pieces designed for use with implants and the prosthetic teeth they support.

Nick M. Mobilia, DDS
ELITE DENTAL ARTS
9 East 45th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10017                                                                             (212)681-0939