Dental Blog

Dental crowns and bridges from Metropolitan Prosthodontics in Plymouth, MN provide effective solutions to replace missing teeth. In other cases, a crown can avoid extraction by repairing a badly decayed tooth.

Artificial teeth – dentures, bridges and dental implants – are known medically as dental prostheses. And there’s a specialty in dentistry that focuses on these treatments – prosthodontics, from the Greek “prostho”, meaning replacement, and “dont”, which refers to teeth.

Losing a front tooth can be particularly distressing, as, after all, your smile is an important part of your personality. When you cannot smile, laugh and talk freely without feeling embarrassment, it can affect your self-esteem and self-confidence.

Complete tooth loss is still very common, and more than 36 million Americans are edentulous, meaning they do not have any teeth. If you have lost all your teeth or are facing their loss quite soon, then you have two main choices for their replacement. One option is to have ordinary dentures, or you could consider dental implant treatment which is often regarded as being the gold standard for replacing missing teeth.

If stained teeth are spoiling your smile, the professional teeth whitening experience offers many advantages over DIY treatments with teeth bleaching merchandise. Whitening by a dental professional is safer, more comfortable, and achieves better, longer-lasting results faster.

Every time you talk, yawn, laugh and chew food, you use your temporomandibular joints. These are the joints that hinge or connect your lower jaw to your skull, which are operated by facial muscles. If you develop problems with your temporomandibular joints then these are known as temporomandibular joint disorders, called TMJ disorder or TMD for short.

Dentures today are a far cry from the false teeth earlier generations had to put up with. Thanks to state-of-the-art technology, modern dentures – with porcelain or plastic teeth on an acrylic base – are much more comfortable. They also look more natural, and people can now rarely tell when someone is wearing a denture.

General dental professionals are trained in handling all regular dental care and minor dental treatments, like dental fillings. In addition, some general dentists get extra training in certain processes; on the other hand, a prosthodontist is a dental expert who has obtained highly focused, extensive training in tooth restoration and replacement.

Dentists have been replacing missing teeth with implants since the mid-1960s. Since then, dental implants have become an increasingly popular alternative to more traditional tooth replacement systems. One of the reasons implants have become so widespread is their versatility. As the technology behind implants has advanced, so has their application.

Dentures are dental appliances that are used in the replacement of missing teeth. They’re held in position by remaining jawbone and gum tissue alongside the dental arch, sometimes with assistance from denture adhesives and creams.