Healthy dental condition is important to speak and smile confidently. Gaps between teeth make you feel uncomfortable while communicating and laughing in front of people. This weakens your confidence when you are amid friends or colleagues or with your boss. This article discusses teeth gaps, possible reasons and available treatments to fill them.

What are teeth gaps?
The gap or space found between two teeth is called teeth gap or diastema. The gap between teeth can occur due to unusual habits, inappropriate size of teeth and jawbones, loss of tooth due to gum disease or extraction or extra teeth, etc.

Reasons
Factors such as unusual growth of extra teeth, etc. are said to be the reasons for gaps between teeth.

  • Unusual habits are a common reason for having gaps between teeth. Many people press the roof of mouth with tongue while speaking, eating and swallowing. This creates a thrust on roof of mouth, and over a period causes the teeth to align in such a way that they are away from mouth. This results in gaps between teeth.
  • Gaps develop because of missing teeth or mismatch between teeth and jaw bones. Loss of teeth on the jaw can develop gaps between teeth.
  • A mismatch between size of teeth and jaw also causes extra gaps between teeth. When size of jaw bone is too big or the labial frenum (tissues that extend from gums) is over-sized, and if size of teeth is too small, extra spaces occur between teeth.
  • Sometimes gaps occur when extra teeth grow on the jawbone. Such extra teeth tend to push neighbouring teeth apart for their space.

Treatments to fill teeth gaps
You can assess yourself, whether or not to have treatment to fill gaps. This depends upon various factors such as size of gaps and the overall health of oral cavity. Given here are treatments available.

  • Orthodontic braces
  • This is one of the most suitable methods when there are small gaps between the teeth. This method uses teeth braces to apply pressure on teeth, which helps align teeth together over time, and thus the gaps are corrected. The only disadvantage with orthodontic braces is that, it takes long time and they are not good for those looking for instantaneous solution.

  • Veneers
  • This method of treatment uses thin layer of material on the tooth. Two types of tooth covering materials – composite and porcelain are used.

    • Composite veneers use materials that can be attached directly to tooth. They might need fabrication with cement like material. Porcelain veneers are fabricated with other materials to bind to teeth. This method is suitable for filling small gaps. But it is not good for filling large gaps because it might result in front teeth. The disadvantage of this method is that the teeth need to be prepared for treatment. That is, teeth need to be removed and replaced with veneers appropriately.
    • Porcelain veneers are embedded on the teeth by removing a minute quantity of the enamel. These veneers help correct the gaps between teeth and enhance the cosmetic appearance.
  • Partial denture
  • Partial denture method implants a false tooth to fill gaps between teeth. This method is advantageous when there are large gaps. The disadvantage of partial denture lies in its appearance. It makes it difficult while chewing and eating hard foods.

  • Dental implants
  • This method involves artificial implant of false tooth and is optional for those who have lost their teeth due to accidents, disease or for other reasons. Since this method offers replacement of root portion by titanium material to restore a tooth that resembles missing tooth, this method is beneficial to those who are looking for a long term solution.

    • This method is usually performed in two stages, first a hole is drilled into jawbone, and it is left for few months to heal. In the second stage, a tooth is integrated with a bone where drilling is performed.
    • Though it gives a permanent solution, it needs good oral health condition once the jawbone is drilled, to avoid infections and other complications.

Gaps between teeth are cosmetic issues in many cases. In some cases, they affect speech. They are curable by different methods. People for whom cosmetic aspect in teeth is essential might choose one of the methods to plug these gaps.