Pain under a dental bridge
Pain under the bridge can be unpleasant and has many causes, which is why it must be investigated by a dentist. Probably the most harmless cause is washed out and missing cement under the bridge, which means that the abutment teeth are no longer tightly enclosed. As a result, the teeth can already hurt when breathing cold air.
However, as soon as the bridge is put in place with new cement, the pain is no longer noticeable. Furthermore, the nerves of the abutment teeth can become inflamed and painful, which results in a root canal treatment. After an optimal root canal treatment, however, there should be no pain whatsoever.
Another reason for pain can be caries under the abutment teeth, whereupon the bridge should be taken down to treat the caries. After the carious lesions are removed, cleaned and filled, the bridge can be reattached. Another cause may be inflammation of the gums under the bridge member due to food residue not being removed, which will not cause any discomfort after thorough cleaning and regression of the gums.
One of the teeth may also be fractured (i.e. have a crack or fissure), which can lead to severe pain under the bridge. If these teeth are broken in the longitudinal axis, they are no longer worth preserving and would have to be extracted.The manifold causes of pain make it impossible for the person affected to assess how bad the individual complaints really are and should be examined and fathomed by a dentist as quickly as possible so that the pain can be relieved quickly and the dental bridge can be preserved. If pain on a bridge occurs during the chewing process, it can have multiple causes.
In the majority of cases, these pains occur shortly after insertion and can be caused by pre-contact. In this case, the bridge touches the opposing teeth of the other jaw in front of all other teeth and is thus subjected to much more pressure than in the normal situation. The problem can be remedied by the dentist grinding away the areas that are too high.
Furthermore, the nerve from one of the abutment teeth may have become inflamed, leading to an inflammation below the tip of the root. The tissue below the root tip swells and allows the tooth to become slightly higher, so that a preliminary contact is also formed. When biting together, the tooth is repeatedly pressed into the inflamed tooth socket, which causes pain.
