This young lady has just finished her braces. The orthodontist did an excellent job, but there is still a problem when you look at her smile. Any ideas??
I have been ordering my supplies recently from a new dentist-owned GPO (Group Purchasing Organization). I had been ordering from one of the ‘major’ dental supply companies but found them REALLY overpriced when I did a comparison to Synergy. The Synergy concept is to use a large group of dental professionals to negotiate reduced prices on supplies. Read more about it here.
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.
And so to review…..we started with two very small lateral incisors.
Small laterals before ortho and bonding
Ultimately we decided to go with the first discussed option…..leaving ideal spaces and then bonding them closed. Now I have to warn you—-the orthodontist has to be VERY good for this work. If not, you will end with two teeth that do not match in size or proportion. Here’s the first tooth, before and after:
Small tooth with spaces before bonding
Tooth after bonding to close spaces and correct the size
We (the orthodontist and myself) discussed our two options.
1. Move the lateral incisors into the middle of the spaces, bond the teeth to make them ideal for size and proportion, finish the orthodontics.
2. Complete the ortho, leaving ideal spacing for the laterals, THEN bond the teeth after the orthodontics is finished.
Both are fairly difficult. We’ll talk about them in separate posts.
And only a little more, and you can REALLY see all the cavity!!
Cavity revealed
Just saw this patient and thought we’d take photos of the procedure because I could see a ‘shadow’ in the tooth, but absolutely nothing on her x-ray. Having done many teeth similarly, I thought this would be a good teaching case. Here’s a photo of the tooth before we started:
Tooth with cavity
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
On a recent visit to get her teeth cleaned I asked this pretty patient if she’s lost weight. Yes she had!! And she was VERY proud of that fact! So I suggested we update her portrait photo that we had taken after we fixed her front teeth, and she readily agreed. Her teeth look absolutely amazing, and she takes a great photo, too!
Portrait photo
