A little while ago I posted some pretty scary photos of my office as it was being renovated, including this one:

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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:

This is a case that I first talked about here.  Now, the implant has been placed and it’s time to put the post and crown in.

And here’s the new filling. It came out great! And surprisingly there was no sensitivity to hot, cold, or biting after the big cavity was cleaned out and the tooth filled.

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!!

And here’s the beautiful portrait photo of the patient after having completed her work. She’s SO excited about her new teeth….and so are we!!

Here is where we started. This young lady lost a lot of tooth structure earlier in her life. Now the teeth are too short, and VERY thin at the edge. Although there is no sensitivity, the nerve in these teeth is barely covered. There is almost no tooth structure left to protect them. Our challenge is to not only replace the lost tooth structure, but also restore ideal function and esthetics.

And here’s the area at only 2 months after the gum surgery. The healing is significantly better and, again, look how much of the root surface remains covered from the original photo. To review, I placed a tooth colored filling to replicate or replace the lost ‘landmark’ that differentiates between the enamel and root surface of the tooth, giving the gum specialist a ‘target’ to place his graft afterwards. This happens to be an IDEAL result.