Implant Splinted Crown: What’s the Advantages and Disadvantages?

Splinting two dental implants together does give them additional strength as a group, however, it can be slightly harder to clean because they are connected. This occurs with natural teeth as well when patients have single tooth crowns versus bridges. The advantages and disadvantages need to be looked at with your particular situation. There are times when the size of the implants are large enough to leave them as non-splinted crowns to facilitate your ability to keep them clean. There are other times when the size of the implants necessitates splinting them together. Other reasons to splint may also include a location in the front of the mouth where multiple teeth are missing and putting single implants too close together would not look very good and so a “dummy” tooth or pontic is placed between implants and then connected via an implant bridge. Yet, another reason may be related to the forces that you will put on the implants because of your bite and how your teeth close together.

I have two implants in upper molars reading for crowns. I was told they are OK for single crowns, however my main dentist refused to do 2 separate crowns and insists he will only use a splinted crown. His reason is that he said I grind my teeth and the separate crowns will not work and he does not want future problems coming back to him. I wear a nightguard anyway so I don't know why he refuses to do the single crown. 2 other dentists saw my x-ray and said they would not do splinted crowns and would only do separate crowns, because they said the splinted crown will cause me not to be able to keep it clean and will cause bacterial infections. I am so confused and angry that I have to not trust anyone.

Im dealing with the exact issue right now:( Did u ever find what was better ?