So to review….this patient has a fractured front tooth that will need a crown. But he’s not ready for that yet, and still wants to have a better looking smile.
A few minutes later, the tooth is once again presentable and will function well for the near future.
The easiest, fastest way to at least temporarily fix this tooth was some bonding. Yes, it will DEFINITELY need a more definitive restoration (a crown) in the near future. But this will get him out the door and looking presentable!
So this gentleman is not ready to crown his teeth, but there is a large fracture. It doesn’t hurt, but esthetically it looks less than ideal. He’d like a temporary ‘fix’ until we can crown it (which, again, he is not ready to do right now). What to do???
Sometimes people are not ready to restore their front teeth. There might be a need, whether from fractures, wear, large fillings….any number of reasons. But maybe they just are not psychologically or financially in a position to really ‘fix’ their teeth. Here’s a quick example: This tooth fractured, but the gentleman does not want to crown his front teeth just yet. So….what to do??
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And here’s the final result:
The patient was thrilled to have this area filled in! We’ll get him back soon for a ‘final’ photo, after the tissue has healed completely and the teeth have re-hydrated (they get a bit dried out during the bonding process).
This young man has recently finished braces, and the orthodontist sent him to us because of the gap that was left between these two teeth. All the other teeth were placed ideally, and if this space was closed the other teeth would be in the wrong spot so they would not function correctly or look right. So we talked about bonding to solve the problem.
So this area had too much space after braces, but everything else was ideal. Some patients would be fine with the space between these teeth, but it REALLY bothered this patient. So our solution was to add a bit of bonding to either tooth, closing the gap and making it look better.
As you can tell, I obviously did not think these teeth were in need of veneers. A little bonding and a few minutes later they looked like new! I told the patient that she might EVENTUALLY need more definitive restorations (veneers) but for now the bonding was the easiest, least invasive, least expensive alternative. She was thrilled with the results!
At what point does a tooth need a veneer? We’ll discuss the criteria I use at a later date, but this nice young lady was told she needed veneers on these teeth. Now I’ll admit the teeth are not too pretty with the chipped and broken edges, but does it REALLY require veneers to properly restore them???
Chipped, broken teeth-before bonding
