Complete crown splints Despite the advantage of minimal-preparation splints are still common nts, complete crown This is because the natural crowns of the teeth being splinted often already have large restora extracted, so that the appliance becomes a splint/ bridge. Figure 12.10 shows a typical 12-un splint/bridge where six teeth are missing and where the remaining teeth were uncomfortably mobile. A partial denture to replace the missing teeth would probably have increased the mobil of the remaining teeth; and the patient was most unhappy about wearing a removable appli ance. The radiographs of this patient are shown Figure 7.5 The disadvantages of this technique are that it very time-consuming, both atthe chairside and the laboratory, and therefore very expensiv and if failure occurs, it may be necessary to re- move the entire sp nt and maybe extract severa other teeth. his type of appliance should there. fore only be provided for very highly motivated patients.