Redwood Dental Smiles: Blog

Among the many means by which we can restore teeth at Redwood Dental Smiles, one of the oldest is the dental bridge. This prosthetic is used when there are several teeth in a row that need new crowns or are missing entirely. A single implant supports an artificial crown for just one tooth, but a bridge is several crowns linked together. Typically, the crowns at the end would be supported and the crown in the middle would be suspended between them. The supported crowns may be attached to fixed implants or they may be removable in the form of a partial denture. It is also possible to have the crowns supported by reshaped natural teeth. Because natural teeth tend to have fewer problems, dentists would not usually want to reshape natural crowns to have bridges put over them unless they were already decayed. However, there may be an advantage to having a patient retain the natural roots of their supporting teeth, particularly if their jawbones may not be able to support implants. Modern bri...

It’s no fun to have a broken or decayed molar. But at Redwood Dental Smiles in Castro Valley, our staff has the experience and technology to set things right. When a tooth gets damaged, we can mill a replacement crown for it. In cases where only a portion of a large tooth has been lost or needs to be removed, we can mill a partial crown to fill it in. Partial crowns are known as inlays or onlays, depending on their size. We’ve discussed on our blog before how the crowns of molars are made up of pointy cusps separated by indentations. An inlay would be used as a damaged indentation’s substitute. It can be thought of as being like a more permanent version of the sealants that are used to smooth indentations over and create less space for food debris to get trapped in. An onlay is a larger partial crown and would replace at least one missing cusp. Once the dentist has drilled away decayed material, we’ll have a better idea of how large a partial crown the patient needs. Normally, this pro...