Dental implants

Procedure full bridge on dental implants

When you're missing several teeth, your jawbone can shrink making you look older than you are. A simple solution to stop and reverse this process is a dental bridge on dental implants.

All-ceramic bridge on dental implants procedure Step   Step   Step   Step Examination Implantation Smile in 24h   Final bridge       The first step is to visit us for an examination and to discuss your individual solution options.   This is the step wherein we will place the dental implants in your jaw.   The next day the bridges are screwed in place over the dental implants.   After 4 months the temporary bridge is replaced by a final bridge.

Step : presurgical examination

At least 1 day before the surgery (preferably some days more) x-rays, pictures of the face and of the teeth, impressions of the teeth or jaws (in case the patient is already wearing dentures) will be taken as well as some measurements to determine the desired position of the new teeth.

In case of complete bridges in the upper and lower jaw your dentist has the complete freedom to place the teeth in their ideal position. Sometimes the upper teeth will be brought down a bit. By doing this there will be more show of the upper front teeth and the teeth of the upper and lower jaw will make contact sooner as the patient bites down. Therefore the distance between the nose and the chin becomes larger. This normally improves the grooves at the corner of the mouth. More show of the upper front teeth and improvement of the grooves at the corners of the mouth make the patient look younger.

More show of teeth can make you look younger!

Together with the patient a color for the new teeth will be chosen.
This examination will take 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Step : implantation surgery

The placement of the dental implants is preferably performed in general anesthesia. Only in cases of a limited number of dental implants local anesthesia is advisable. Especially the placement of zygomatic implants is unpleasant in local anesthesia both for patient and surgeon.

After eventual extractions of natural teeth the dental implants are placed and immediately impressions of the dental implants are taken. For these impressions, trays that look like dentures with the teeth in their desired position have been prepared. The impressions give the dental laboratory all the information needed to make the acrylic implant bridges within 24 hours.

Postoperative pain can be well suppressed with normal painkillers.
The surgery will last 1.5 to 2 hours per jaw.

Step : placement of the bridges after 24h

The next day the bridges are screwed in place over the dental implants. The bite will be checked with blue paper that shows where the teeth of upper and lower jaw make the first contact. If necessary this can be corrected by grinding off a little bit of the acrylic teeth.
At the end of this session the patient can take a bite into a juicy apple.

The placement of one bridge of 12 teeth will normally take between 15 minutes and half an hour.

Step : placement of the final bridge after 4 months

After 4 months the dental implants will be so intensely connected to the bone (osseo-integrated) that they cannot be removed with a screwdriver anymore. If at the moment of the placement of the dental implants some teeth have been removed these wounds will have healed by now.

During the healing process the volume of the jawbone and the gums in that particular area will have diminished a bit. Therefore at this moment exists a gap of 2 -5 mm between the bridge and the gums.

The bridge(s) will be unscrewed from the dental implants to check if they have all well healed into the bone. If so the bridge(s) can be screwed back in place and some impression material can be injected into the gap between the bridge(s) and the gums. Especially in the upper jaw the escape of air in between bridge and gums can cause speech problems. Some patients complain about food retention under the bridge(s).

The bridge(s) plus impression material will be sent to the dental laboratory to replace the impression material by acrylic and fill up the gaps. The same day the bridge(s) can be screwed back in place.

In case a dental implant has not healed well

In case 1 dental implant has not well healed into the bone it needs to be removed. This normally is no problem as per jaw 1 or 2 more implants have been placed than is strictly necessary to support a complete implant bridge. It is extremely rare (less than 1 in 500) that more than 1 implant has not well healed. If there is a problem with one of the zygomatic implants this needs to be removed and immediately a new one can be placed just next to it. This can be done in local anesthesia. The acrylic bridge can be adjusted and screwed back in place the same day.

Porcelain bridge

Another possibility is to start the procedure of making (a) porcelain bridge(s) to replace the acrylic one(s). This will all together take almost 2 weeks. In those 2 weeks the patient will have to come to the clinic 4 -5 times for 1 -2 hours. The advantage of porcelain bridges on dental implants is that they are much stronger, look exactly like beautiful natural teeth and are very easy to clean. In case of bridges of 12 teeth both in upper and lower jaw a night guard needs to be worn livelong to prevent teeth from breaking due to uncontrolled crunching during the night.