General — 5 min read
Bridges
A fixed replacement carried by the teeth on either side of the gap. Fast, proven, and it costs you the outer surface of two healthy teeth.
Screened and introduced free, usually within a few hours. Sunny Isles Beach, Florida and the surrounding corridor.
Indications
A bridge tends to be the better choice when
A bridge spans a gap with a false tooth joined to crowns on the neighbouring teeth. It is cemented permanently and, unlike a partial denture, is not removed.
- The teeth either side of the gap already need crowns or have large fillings
- You are not a candidate for implants, or do not want surgery
- There is insufficient bone and you would rather not undergo grafting
- You want the gap closed in weeks rather than months
- A medical condition or medication makes implant surgery inadvisable
- A single front tooth is missing and the neighbours are untouched — where a Maryland bridge may apply
Good candidate if
- The adjacent teeth already need restoration
- Implants are unsuitable, unwanted or unaffordable
- You will clean beneath the span daily
- The gap is short — one or two missing teeth
No cost, no obligation, no lead list.
The detail
The honest comparison with an implant
A fixed replacement carried by the teeth on either side of the gap. Fast, proven, and it costs you the outer surface of two healthy teeth.
A bridge requires the two abutment teeth to be cut down for crowns. If those teeth are pristine, that is a real and permanent cost — and the abutments carry the chewing load of three teeth through two roots. Published survival is good, around 90 percent at ten years, but failures usually involve decay or fracture in an abutment, which converts a three-unit problem into a five-unit one. An implant, by contrast, leaves the neighbours untouched and preserves bone at the site, at the cost of surgery and several months.
Where the neighbouring teeth already need crowns, that calculation flips entirely and a bridge becomes the efficient answer — you get the crowns you needed and the gap closed in one piece of work. For a single missing front tooth with healthy neighbours, a Maryland bridge is worth asking about: a ceramic wing bonded to the back of one adjacent tooth, requiring almost no preparation, reversible, and with excellent modern survival data in the right case.
The sequence
What actually happens, in order.
Timings vary between practices and cases. The order does not — and a plan that skips a step is worth asking about.
Assess the abutments
Radiographs and vitality testing on the teeth either side. Compromised abutments make the whole bridge a poor bet.
Preparation
Both abutments prepared for crowns in one appointment, typically 90 minutes to two hours.
Scan and temporary
A digital scan of the span, then a temporary bridge protecting the prepared teeth and the gap.
Laboratory
Two to three weeks. Zirconia is the usual choice for strength across a span.
Fit and cleaning brief
Fit, bite adjustment, cementation, then instruction on threading floss or a water flosser under the false tooth.
Getting the right hands
Who should be doing your bridges.
This is the variable that decides your result, and it is the one you have least ability to assess from the outside.
Not years in dentistry. How many of these they do in a month, and what the difficult ones looked like.
Anyone can photograph a result on delivery day. We want to see it after it has been used.
CBCT, microscope, scanner, printer — whichever this case genuinely requires, on site rather than referred out.
For anything ceramic, the technician is half the result. A dentist who cannot name theirs is outsourcing blind.
Bridges FAQ
What people ask us about bridges.
Including the cost question, answered with a real range rather than a request to call.
If the neighbouring teeth are healthy and untouched, an implant is usually the better long-term investment: it preserves those teeth and the bone, and it lasts longer. If those teeth already need crowns, a bridge is efficient and sensible. Cost over twenty years is closer than the initial quotes suggest.
A three-unit bridge in South Florida typically runs $3,000 to $5,500 — roughly $1,000 to $1,800 per unit. That is often below the cost of a single implant and crown up front, though the bridge is more likely to need replacing within fifteen years.
The false tooth does not touch the gum with a gap you can floss through normally, so you thread floss underneath with a floss threader or Superfloss, or use a water flosser daily. Neglecting this causes decay at the abutment margins, which is the main cause of bridge failure.
Ten to fifteen years is the usual expectation, with around 90 percent surviving to ten. Longevity depends on how well the abutment margins are kept clean and whether the bite loads the span heavily.
A false tooth with a thin ceramic or metal wing bonded to the back of an adjacent tooth, requiring almost no drilling. It is excellent for a single missing front tooth with healthy neighbours, and is reversible. It is not suited to back teeth or to heavy biting forces.