And here is the pretty smile on this young lady after closing the gap on the right side (the patient’s left side). She was VERY excited with the results, and we were too!
After bonding
Ok….here’s what we did. Only the front 4 teeth are crowned. Everything else whitened nicely and there was no reason to put crowns on these other teeth. So instead of having crowns on all her upper teeth this happy patient was able to have only 4 and get an absolutely fantastic final result.
And here’s another of the veneer photos. The tissue now has had a few weeks to fully mature, so you can see how the papilla (the piece of gum tissue we have between our teeth that extends down to a point) has begun to drop into place. Again, no sensitivity and one happy, happy patient!!
Veneers on central incisors
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??
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
And one last look at our before-and-after of the happy patient:
Prior to orthodontics and bonding--full face
After the bonding and ortho--full face
Just took this photo recently of one happy lady. Doesn’t she have a gorgeous smile??!! I’ll bet you can’t tell what we did to improve it….
Portrait photo
So were able to conservatively repair this tooth in a few short minutes and get a great result just in time for this patient to head overseas for an extended trip. And no one will be able to tell she’s had anything done!
Broken tooth
Repaired tooth
This tooth has been fractured for MANY years. The patient never really did anything about it, but with a bit more of it breaking recently, she wanted me to ’smooth it out’. I thought the better idea was to replace the missing tooth structure.
Broken tooth
