Maintenance Tips for a Healthy, Long-Lasting Dental Bridge

Have you had a missing tooth recently replaced with a dental bridge? You have chosen wisely because dental bridges are excellent for restoring your lost tooth and confidence. These prosthetics help restore aesthetics and mouth functionality.

After getting replacements for your natural missing tooth with a tooth bridge, you must ensure the replacement tooth remains healthy as a long-lasting replacement solution. This blog provides maintenance tips for dental bridges to help extend the longevity of prosthetics.

Why Is Dental Bridge Maintenance Essential?

A bridge for tooth helps fill gaps between your teeth to improve chewing and your overall quality of life. Practicing excellent dental bridge care is essential to ensure your artificial teeth appear natural. Not paying attention to your dental hygiene can result in dental problems later, like periodontal disease and further tooth loss.

Maintaining dental bridges helps keep them in optimal shape, ensuring they last longer to keep your teeth healthy.

Maintenance Tips for Your Dental Bridge

Dental hygiene for bridges is essential, just as your natural teeth, your mouth health, and other restorations in your mouth. Check out the tips mentioned below for the maintenance of your dental bridge:

• Regular Brushing: Your teeth require twice-daily brushing using circular motions and cleaning the base of the bridge where food particles and bacteria can accumulate. Avoiding the twice-daily regimen to clean teeth and the prosthetics result in the bridge’s loosening and detachment.
• Flossing Daily: Flossing between your teeth helps keep them clean and your gums healthy. Flossing the dental bridge daily using appropriate dental floss is essential. After positioning the dental floss, gently move it up and down to clean the Pontic and the abutment teeth. Repeat the process for all gaps between the prosthetic and your gums. However, remain gentle to prevent damaging your dental bridge and the neighboring teeth.
• Antibacterial Mouthwash: an antibacterial mouthwash helps remove bacteria from the challenging-to-reach areas of your mouth. The mouthwash also helps prevent gum inflammation and freshens your breath. In addition, it helps strengthen tooth enamel of your natural teeth to prevent cavities.
• Sticky and Hard Foods: Avoiding sticky and hard foods pressurizing the dental bridge and causing damage is recommended by the dentist providing a dental bridge in Salem, MA. Examples of hard foods include candy, ice, and nuts. Having chewy foods can loosen the dental bridge or break them. Therefore it is best to limit having chewy foods such as caramel and taffy. You must prefer a balanced diet for your overall dental health.
• Using a WaterPik: if you find it challenging to floss your teeth with regular dental floss, using a WaterPik helps remove tooth particles and plaque by using a stream of water. However, you must use the appropriate tip with a brush-like shape to remove debris around the bridge. You can fill the reservoir of the WaterPik with warm water for use on your dental bridge using a medium or low-pressure setting. Placing the tip of the WaterPik under the Pontic and directing the stream of water toward your gum line by gently moving the tip back and forth between the bridge and the surrounding teeth along with the gum line helps clean the prosthetic to extend its longevity.
• Dental Visits: your dental hygiene depends on the care you provide and receive from your dentist at six monthly intervals. The preventive measure ensures the dentist detects problems in your mouth early before they aggravate them. Dentists check for chips, cracks, or prosthetic loosening when you have dental bridges before the situation worsens. They also provide a dental cleaning to remove plaque and tartar buildup on natural and artificial teeth. The cleaning helps prevent gum disease, a severe condition that is incurable and requires ongoing maintenance from the dentist.
• Quit Smoking: with dental bridges to replace natural teeth, it helps if you quit smoking because tobacco use enhances your risk of gum disease and oral cancer to compromise the lifespan of your dental bridge. Smoking also causes discoloration and stains the bridge to impact aesthetics.

What Happens If You Neglect Maintenance of Your Dental Bridge?

Maintaining your dental health in excellent condition by following your dentist’s instructions and getting six monthly dental exams and cleanings helps prevent issues like infections, tooth loss, et cetera. Similarly, if you neglect to care for your dental bridge, plaque and tartar buildup around the replacement can loosen the prosthetic and make you vulnerable to periodontal disease. Improper oral hygiene can also cause halitosis and weaken teeth if you develop gum disease. Inappropriate dental hygiene practices will compromise your dental bridge, loosening them and making replacements essential. Therefore it helps if you pay attention to the maintenance of your dental bridge to ensure it remains a long-lasting restoration for your missing tooth.

If missing teeth affect aesthetics and mouth functionality, Mass Bay Dental can help restore them with dental bridges. Please consult the dental practice to restore your lost tooth with suitable bridges from them and learn about caring for the replacement teeth to extend their longevity.