Dental Bridges for Partial Tooth Loss

Key Message

This review identified limited evidence about the clinical effectiveness of dental bridges for partial tooth loss in adults. The identified studies had several limitations, including limited comparative data and concerns related to a lack of dental bridge specificity. Therefore, the findings related to effectiveness are uncertain.

In adults with partial tooth loss who have dental bridges supported by natural teeth, there may be minimal rates of dental bridge failure, high rates of dental bridge survival, and few complications.

Limited evidence from 1 study with a small number of patients that directly compared all-ceramic dental bridges with metal-ceramic dental bridges reported no failures in either group but suggested that patients with all-ceramic dental bridges may have more complications and changes in patient satisfaction, but the findings were uncertain.

One patient with lived experience shared clinical information related to the use of a dental bridge and reported that the dental bridge helped facilitate eating but they experienced issues with chipping which negatively affected function and satisfaction with the appearance of the bridge, which also had financial implications for repair and replacement of the damaged bridge. None of the studies in this report included direct measures related to the patient-identified outcomes, specifically financial implications.

We did not find any studies that compared dental bridges to partial dentures or different designs of dental bridges, nor did we find any studies on the cost-effectiveness of dental bridges that met the criteria for this review.

We did not find any evidence-based guidelines on the use of dental bridges for adults with partial tooth loss that met the criteria for this review.