Dental Advice Please!

[Ria]

I have recently chipped the porcelain on my bridge work and when I saw my dentist he told me that to replace it it would cost £900! Unfortunately it bridges three teeth although only one tooth is chipped. I told him that I can't afford £900 at the moment and he told me that the bridge looked quite secure apart from the chipped area so I could leave it alone. However since my last visit I have lost a bit more of the porcelain and I am worried that I may lose more. Can anyone tell me whether I can get this fixed without having a completely new bridge? Is there anything else I could do to reduce the cost? It seems horrendous to me and I just haven't got that kind of spare cash. I am wondering whether it might be cheaper if I could get the work done in Spain? I am based in SE and I am also wondering if I could get it done more cheaply in another part of the country? Any advice would be most appreciated.

[Toothsmith]

I have recently chipped the porcelain on my bridge work and when I saw my dentist he told me that to replace it it would cost £900! Unfortunately it bridges three teeth although only one tooth is chipped. I told him that I can't afford £900 at the moment and he told me that the bridge looked quite secure apart from the chipped area so I could leave it alone. However since my last visit I have lost a bit more of the porcelain and I am worried that I may lose more. Can anyone tell me whether I can get this fixed without having a completely new bridge? Is there anything else I could do to reduce the cost? It seems horrendous to me and I just haven't got that kind of spare cash. I am wondering whether it might be cheaper if I could get the work done in Spain? I am based in SE and I am also wondering if I could get it done more cheaply in another part of the country? Any advice would be most appreciated.

Hi Ria,

Porcelain chipping from bridgework is always quite unpredictable. You can never tell if there are more cracks or how strong the porcelain that is left is.
Often, the structure of the bridge underneath the porcelain is still sound, and it's really only the fact that it doesn't look so good that makes it necessary to change it.

£900 sounds about right to me. You must remember this is a precision unit made in gold and porcelain by a highly skilled technician to an individual mould of your mouth. Plus there are the overheads to cover at the dental practice as well. You don't just get them off the shelf! Price is likely to vary at different practices though.

There are kits available that can add white stuff to a bridge where the porcelain has broken. The problem with these kits is that they are expensive, and so unless the dentist sees a lot of broken porcelain there is not a lot of point in having one. (The stuff has a 'use by' date and is expensive to replace) So if a dentist has one of these kits, then the actual price-per-fix has to be quite high anyway in order to justify it. Then, if more porcelain breaks off, you may need it doing again, or the whole bridge replacing anyway.

Finding a dentist on price alone is probably the very worst way of finding a dentist. Especially if you are going to go with the lowest quote for the job. If you are a regular patient with your dentist, then he will have the best knowledge of your mouth, will know what is under the bridge, and have the best idea as to how to fix it or replace it.

Working on a mouth is not like working on a car or a washing machine where all the parts interact in the same way on every model in the range. People are different, and what works for someone may not work for someone else. Going abroad for treatment is probably the very worst way to do it unless you spend significant amounts of time in that area of that country anyway.

Imagine if you went abroad on a cheap flight and stayed away for a couple of weeks whilst the treatment was done. You come home and something breaks or worse still something starts hurting.

A local dentist would have no idea what was under the bridgework, how it had been prepared, what it had been stuck on with, the quality of the workmanship etc etc. He would be starting from scratch with a patient in a lot of pain. And that would cost a lot of money to put right.

Alternatively, you could book a flight back to Spain (Which wouldn't be cheap at short notice) and get the original dentist to fix it.

I would go back to your original dentist, explain you can't afford the replacement yet, and can he do anything to put you on until you can. (If indeed anything needs doing - if you can't see it, it may be ok to leave it) Then save up.

Don't trust your teeth to the bargin basement. The next set are plastic and live in a glass at night. ;)

[Ria]

Toothsmith, Thanks so much for your comprehensive advice. I really believe in keeping my own teeth at all costs and I appreciate that a lot of skill goes into this kind of work but it is still a very expensive excercise from my point of view. At this point I shall have to hope for the best that the rest of the bridge stays intact. Thanks again