A dentist finishes 4 years of dental school and graduates with a DDS or DMD degree. A general dentist has good knowledge of most disciplines in dentistry and offers a variety of dental services. A Prosthodontist is a specialist in restorative and reconstructive dentistry. A Prosthodontist is a dentist who goes back to university to study an additional 3 years in a full time graduate program and gets a certificate in the specialty of prosthodontics and a Masters degree. Prosthodontists have more advanced training than general dentists, so they usually treat more complex cases and are the recognized specialists in tooth replacement.

The advanced training required to become a prosthodontist is time consuming and difficult so there are not many of them around.

Prosthodontists are dentistry’s best kept secret.

Crowns are hollow restorations that slide over the top of a tooth and cover the tooth on all 5 sides (top, front, back and 2 sides). They are used when a tooth is broken, chipped, cracked, heavily filled or has a very large cavity (hole in it). Crowns can be made of metal(gold), porcelain, zirconia or acrylic. Your prosthodontist or dentist will recommend which crown material is best for you. Veneers are basically half a crown and they are glued onto the front of a tooth as a thin facing (like an artificial nail is glued on). Veneers are used to subtly change the shape and colour of teeth. As thinner, more delicate restorations than crowns,  veneers are usually recommended for the front teeth only. They are very kind to the tooth because you don’t have to grind a tooth down to glue a veneer on. Veneers can be made in a dental lab out of porcelain or built-up chair side with filling material by your prosthodontist or dentist.

Tooth bonding commonly refers to a procedure when a prosthodontist (or a dentist) applies a tooth coloured material, called composite resin, to the surface of a tooth to repair it. It can be a simple, cost-effective way to cosmetically repair teeth in a single visit. It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour for the procedure, depending on how complex the procedure is. The basic steps are, the tooth is primed/cleaned with some chemicals (an acid, a primer, an adhesive), the composite resin is then added in bits and shaped. Then a special light is used to cure/harden the material. More composite resin filling can be added and shaped if needed and cured again. Then special burs (drill bits) are used to shape the filling and polish it.  If you want a more technical answer, bonding is the process by which dentists prepare the tooth surface so that we can glue (bond) different materials to it.

When you have missing teeth, a prosthodontist or dentist can fill this gap or “bridge” the gaps in your smile with false teeth. A bridge then, is a false tooth (called a pontic) that fills in the gap in your smile that is attached to the teeth adjacent to the gap by cemented crowns. Another term for this is a fixed partial denture (fixed, because it attaches to the other teeth with a glue/cement). This is an example of a bridge to replace 4 missing front teeth. The end crowns on the left and right get cemented to the 2 teeth next to the gap in the mouth and the 4 pontics (false teeth) fill in the gap between the missing teeth. If the false tooth is attached to the adjacent teeth with some thin metal wire hooks, this is not a bridge. Dentists call this a removable partial denture because you can remove your false teeth by unhooking the wires from your mouth.