This lovely 90-year-old patient has kept most of her teeth her whole life. She flosses twice daily and uses fluoride every night! One day at a luncheon with friends, she accidentally bit a salad fork, and felt two of her lower front teeth become rather loose and painful to the touch.
After determining that the teeth could be saved, we planned to splint the looser teeth together to the stronger remaining lower front teeth. The splint needed to be plaque-resistant and easily cleaned, in order to be successful long-term, so we planned for a gold lingual (tongue-side) bar retainer.
With no anesthetic needed, we very conservatively prepared a small shelf across the inside of the lower front teeth, and later cemented a gold-alloy retainer that custom fit the nooks and crannies across that row of teeth. The case is now 7 years in service, and the patient is still biting comfortably on her damaged teeth!
