Implant bridges: three teeth on two fixtures, and when that is the right answer
You do not need one fixture per missing tooth. Two can carry three, with a suspended tooth between them. It costs less and it loads the two harder.
How it is done here ONE Dental Clinic
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Where several adjacent teeth are missing, placing a fixture under each one is not always necessary or wise. An implant bridge puts fixtures at each end and suspends the tooth in the middle, which is called a pontic, between them.
Pontic
The pontic touches gum but is not attached to bone. It is carried entirely by the fixtures either side of it, which is the whole idea and also the whole limitation: the load that would have gone into a third fixture goes into the two that are there.
Anterior and posterior
The clinic performs both. At the front the problem is aesthetic, and how the pontic meets the gum decides whether it looks like a tooth or like a bridge. At the back the problem is force, because molars generate several times the bite load of incisors.
Cantilever
A cantilever bridge carries a tooth off one end rather than between two supports, so the load is applied as leverage rather than as compression. The clinic performs these and shows one on a radiograph on this page. It is a legitimate solution in the right site and a stress concentrator in the wrong one.
- Pontic
- A suspended tooth between two supported ones. Touches gum, not bone.
- Implant bridge
- Fixtures at each end carrying a span.
- Anterior
- Aesthetic problem. The gum contact under the pontic decides the look.
- Posterior
- Force problem. Molar bite loads are much higher.
- Cantilever
- A tooth carried off one end. Leverage rather than compression.
Clinical photographs
This article is information, not medical advice, and reading it does not create a doctor-patient relationship. The Seoul Glow is a registered facilitator: we coordinate care, we do not practise medicine and we do not decide what treatment is right for you. No outcome can be guaranteed by anyone. Discuss any procedure with a licensed physician who has examined you.
