Here is a tooth that had a large cavity and big silver filling.  You can see the dark shadow of the filling through tooth.  Because there was so little healthy tooth structure remaining, we decided to place a porcelain crown.

Here’s a different view of the same new room of equipment.

Now look how things came out.  We’re all SO happy with the final results!!

Let’s get to the bottom line:  I felt crowns were WAY too aggressive to replace a little discolored bonding.  Veneers were an option, but with this patient in her late teens, I was looking for a more conservative option (leaving veneers for the ‘next step’ down the road in 5-10 years.) We decided on a course of tooth whitening and then simply re-surfacing the existing bonding with a brighter-colored composite.  We only had a few weeks, so she quickly finished whitening at home.  Here’s what she looked like after the whitening, with the original bonding:

You’re gonna love this one.  We recently saw this young lady for a 3rd opinion.  She previously had some bonding on a few front teeth that was getting a little older.  She was heading to college and hoped to improve the overall esthetics of her front teeth. The options she was initially presented included veneers alone, or veneers and crowns. Here’s what things looked like initially:

We’ve covered this before, but it happens SO often that I still need to post about it. Many teeth can APPEAR to be fine, but they actually have cavities hiding inside. Here’s a normal-looking tooth:

So here’s the story. This young lady was in a rush to get to work, was looking down, and forgot about the glass doors ahead of her. After she ran into them the only damage was to these two teeth. She had just had a new crown placed on her upper right central incisor (the broken tooth on her right, or the left in the photo) just before she moved to town. The other tooth had some bonding. Understandably, she was upset. And we needed a quick fix to get her on her way back to work.

Teeth meet glass door……….teeth lose. Glass door wins.

So that was a bad looking tooth.  This looks better.  The crown that was placed on this tooth has an all-porcelain margin (that’s the area where the tooth and crown meet).  There’s no metal in this area to give the gray appearance you can see so often around crowns.  Ask your dentist what esthetic alternatives you have when you are getting a crown.  Tell him or her you want it to look as good as this tooth!!

Remember how the front teeth were originally so thin when we started? (see here) Well now look at them.

They look great!