Peg Teeth

Putting in a false front tooth is a major feat in dental engineering. Usually dentists get around the difficulty by fitting their patients with removable bridges, often uncomfortable. Sometimes they pare down neighboring teeth, use them as anchors for a permanent bridge.

Young Dr. Alvin Edward Strock of Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital has long furrowed his brow over this front-tooth problem. The simplest procedure, he thought, would be to insert a peg in the socket of the extracted tooth, then cement a false tooth to the protruding end of the peg. But he never dared to do it, for he knew metal pegs might induce mouth irritation. Two years ago Dr. Strock decided to try the new alloy, vitallium. Vitallium is the most satisfactory metal doctors use for patching fractures. Fortnight ago, in the American Journal of Orthodontics and Oral Surgery, Dr. Strock told how he used inexpensive vitallium for making successful peg teeth. Into the gaping socket of a willing patient, who was first given a local anesthetic, he inserted a vitallium screw, working it into the jawbone about five-eighths of an inch just as a carpenter screws into wood. To his delight, new bone tissue soon closed tightly around the screw, and the patient was able to chew comfortably with the protruding head. After several months, Dr. Strock cemented a handsome false tooth shell, known as a porcelain jacket crown, on to the head of the screw, and the tooth looked and felt as good as a real one.

To date Dr. Strock has tried his vitallium pegs out on eleven patients. How long the teeth will stay put, cautious Dr. Strock would not say, but he remarked that one patient has been using his tooth for a year and a half.

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