Hi everyone!
Doctor Shervin here from Artistic Dental Studio. I am very excited because I’m going to talk about a very important point that is normally overlooked, and it actually relates to the people who have dental bridges.
Unfortunately, many of these people are not aware that they need to clean underneath the teeth in between. That is very important, and the reason is because they were not instructed how to do so, or they got slack and forgot.
Basically, today a I want to tell you how you can reach underneath those spaces and show you some pictures and also let you know about the consequences if such a thing is not done properly.
So, to begin with, we all know that bridge means everything is connected and you cannot pass normal dental floss in between the teeth anymore, so you need to approach those spaces from underneath.
There are different ways to reach those spaces:
The best way to do that is to use Piksters. Piksters are very tiny, pointy brushes that you can easily pass underneath your bridge, of course if your bridge is designed correctly. By moving the Piksters back and forth several times, you can make sure the area is clean enough.
The second way you can do it is to use floss threaders. Floss threaders are basically hard plastic tips, connected to normal or super dental floss, so it does not bend when passed underneath the bridge. Once passed, all you need to do is to move back and forth. You can even move forward backward to pass underneath the tooth(teeth) in between.
The 3rd way, which is very easy to do, but not as effective as the other two methods is to use water jet. Water jets utilize small nozzles to flow water underneath the bridge, and clean bacteria by pressure. It is not as effective as either Piksters or dental floss, but still better than doing nothing.
Now I need to tell you what happens if cleaning of underneath the bridge is not done on at least daily basis. Bacteria will accumulate underneath those very sensitive areas, I mean where the bridge is connected to the teeth, and this could easily cause either decay or gum disease.
The teeth underneath the bridge are withstanding greater forces, in case of a 3-unit bridge for example, biting forces on three teeth is being shared by only two teeth, and the longer span the bridge, the more the forces would be. So, you can see if anything threatens the gum and the bone around these teeth, they could easily get loose and the whole bridge will be lost. Therefore, we need to make sure we can control the bacteria underneath those sensitive places to avoid dental decay and also gum disease.
OK guys, thank you very much! Hope this one was helpful. If you have any problems passing the Piksters or floss underneath your bridge, please consult your dentist and they can easily help you with that. Please share this blog and I will be with you very soon with another interesting one.
Thank you so much and have a very nice day!
