Options for Complex Restorations

Our experienced dentists at the Miami Beach and North Miami Beach offices of Doctors Ressler, Hirschl, and Lelchuk have provided replacement teeth to a lot of people over the years. In that time, we’ve seen new options for complex restorations develop, allowing us to better serve each patient’s specific needs. To help our patients understand which kind of restoration will benefit them, we wanted to talk a bit about bridges.

Traditional bridges are linked series of artificial crowns, with a middle crown suspended between two crowns that are affixed to natural teeth. The natural teeth would have to be reshaped to accommodate their new caps, which made this kind of bridge an attractive option for people who needed multiple crown replacements. It also allowed people to retain their natural tooth roots, keeping the jaw bones healthy and decreasing the risk of tooth migration. But dentists may also have felt it necessary to reshape or extract teeth that were healthy in order to make room for the bridge, which is no longer a common practice.

Modern partial dentures can be manufactured to fit a patient’s mouth much more closely than in the past. They can be made with gaps for natural teeth, eliminating the need to extract them. The adjoining natural teeth have to be reshaped slightly, but not to the same extent as with fixed bridges. This makes partial dentures a good option for people whose decayed or broken teeth are not all in a row. If the patient has sufficient jaw tissue, it may also be possible to support the partial denture with implants. The denture would still be removable, making it easy to clean.

Dr. Allen Ressler, Dr. Andrew Hirschl, and Dr. Ira Lelchuk operate from two locations. To schedule an appointment at the location at Mount Sinai Medical Center, 4300 Alton Road, Suite 1190, Miami Beach, Florida, 33140, call 305-532-1444. To schedule an appointment at Intracoastal Mall, 3909 NE 163^rdSt, Suite 310, North Miami Beach, Florida, 33160, call 305-949-2630. They can also be reached on their website, Miami Dental through a contact form.

 

Treatments for Cracked Teeth

Nobody expects to crack a tooth, but if they do, we at the Miami Beach and North Miami Beach dental offices of Drs. Ressler, Hirschl, and Lelchuk hope our patients will have some idea of what to expect. We can repair most tooth damage, but patients are often calmer and provide better assistance with their own care when they understand what they’re up against.

Two basic elements of dental safety are to always wear a mouthguard when playing sports and to only use the back teeth for chewing. The molars have wide surfaces for distributing bite force and are held in place by multiple roots and thick ligaments. Other teeth are much likelier to break or tilt if they are subjected to bite force, but the molars can still chip, and they may crack if used to chew ice. If a tooth does break, a patient should rinse their mouth with warm water to make sure it is clean.

If a tooth is only chipped, we may be able to fix it quickly by using bonding. A minor crack, called a craze line, may be possible to cover with a veneer. However, if a tooth is deeply cracked, there is a possibility that the inner pulp will become infected. We may feel the need to perform root canal therapy to prevent this, after which we may reshape the natural dental crown as preparation for covering it with an artificial one. Teeth with cracks that go to the root may not be salvageable, but they can be replaced with partial dentures or crowns supported by implants.

Dr. Allen Ressler, Dr. Andrew Hirschl, and Dr. Ira Lelchuk operate from two locations. To schedule an appointment at the location at Mount Sinai Medical Center, 4300 Alton Road, Suite 1190, Miami Beach, Florida, 33140, call 305-532-1444. To schedule an appointment at Intracoastal Mall, 3909 NE 163^rdSt, Suite 310, North Miami Beach, Florida, 33160, call 305-949-2630. They can also be reached on their website, Miami Dental through a contact form.