www.DMDstudent.com

Now that I have made the plastic form I can start to make the three unit bridge. Vaseline the teeth you have prepared so the acrylic doesn’t stick to them. You don’t use vaseline in a patient, their saliva lubricates everything enough so the acrylic doesn’t stick. Mix the liquid monomer with the polymer sand and pour it into the plastic matrix. Try not to get any air bubbles while pouring. If you do then you can always fill them in later, but it takes extra time.

This photo shows what the acrylic looks like after it has been placed on the teeth and the plastic matrix has been removed. Right now it is pretty rubbery. Here are some more shots:

Here is the temporary removed from the mouth. From here it is placed in water or off to the side until it is fully dried.

As you can tell there is not very much detail, however it is better than a basic block carving of acrylic. There is still much work to do. The next picture shows the underside of the temporary. Acrylic shrinks a lot so this probably won’t fit on the teeth anymore. A re-line has to be done. A re-line is the process of carving out the middle of these teeth, pouring more acrylic into the hole and then re-seating the bridge back onto the crown preparations. Here is the underside of the crown. The two teeth that fit over the existing prepared teeth are called abutments, the middle tooth which will be ‘floating’ is called the pontic. Ideally the pontic will be in contact with the gingiva to stimulate the tissue on chewing and to keep the bone from resorbing.

After some more carving of the teeth, they start to take form. There are various diamond burs, carbide burs and discs used to get the final results. Here are some shots of the work in progress.

This project took me about 10-15 hours. In a couple of weeks we have a practical where we have to do this in three hours. I have noticed in dental school the learning curve is very low at first and it can be frustrating while trying to nail the skills. But once you reach a certain point that curve shoots up exponentially. Before you get any ideas of becoming cocky, let me assure you that when you do reach this exponential growth of skill, you will most certainly be taught a new procedure that leaves you back at the low point in the curve. Let’s hope I can get to the high point of the curve before the practical. Here is my final product: