Projects
008 – Investigation of the longevity of anterior resin bonded bridges
- Chief Investigator: A/Prof Menaka Abuzar
- Associate Investigators: Dr Gerard Clausen, Dr John Locke, Dr Gordon Burt
- Research Assistants: Karen Escobar, Wendy Thomson
- Support: eviDent Foundation
About
Anterior adhesive bridges were developed in the 1970s and widely promoted in the 1980s. The concept was to create a metal ceramic bridge to replace missing teeth which required minimal tooth preparation and still provide adequate retention. This contrasted with conventional crown and bridge work which required full crown preparation on the abutment teeth.
After the initial euphoria, anterior adhesive bridges began to fail after de-bonding of the retainer on the abutment teeth. Failures would occur after only a few months in some cases, with no predictability, and the bridges were considered temporary short-term bridges. Numerous design and material changes were experimented with during the 1980s to get long-term retention and reliable success.
Aims
The project aimed to evaluate the survival of anterior adhesive bridges (ARBBs) with a specific tooth preparation design provided to a patient cohort by prosthodontists in Melbourne.
Results
Results of this study indicate a high survival rate of anterior resin bonded bridges provided by a group of clinicians in Melbourne from 1990 to 2012. The simple and affordable ARBBs with two different modified tooth preparation designs performed well with a survival rate of 98% at five years. There was no significant difference in the survival of ARBBs between the two design preparations.
