Look at the difference in Cleo’s smile before and after her dental treatment. And here’s the pretty portrait photo we took when all her work was finished. It looks great!

Look at Cleo’s smile before and after she had her teeth fixed. She asked for teeth that were straighter and whiter. We completed this with a bridge and some crowns. What a difference!

You’ll recall the tooth Cleo had to have extracted. The temporary was used to ’shape’ the tissue in this area and aid the healing process. Here’s the original condition of her teeth, and the final results:

It’s difficult to even see where the tooth was extracted! The ‘fake’ tooth looks as if it emerges from under the tissue just like all the others. A beautiful result.

How then do we manage the area where Cleo’s tooth is coming out? If we leave the site alone the final result will probably look less than ideal, and could potentially be disasterous. To solve this we made a temporary bridge that was shaped anatomically correct, and placed slightly under the gum line. It therefore appeared to emerge from the gum tissue where the tooth used to be. The temporary restoration was used to actually shape this gum tissue as it healed. After a number of weeks we were able to continue with the bridge process.

Cleo had the non-restorable tooth taken out. When a tooth is taken out the body immediately starts to take away the bone. Basically the body is saying, “No tooth….no bone.” This is a problem we’ll look into further when we discuss dental implants. But in the esthetic zone of the front teeth this can lead to devastating results. As the bone leaves, the gum tissue goes with it. Soon the area where the tooth came out looks ‘caved in’ and the gum tissue has migrated to a higher level than the teeth near it. It looks horrible.

Here’s an area on a different patient that has had only a moderate loss of tissue after a tooth was removed. This is because a dental implant was placed in the area.

These were the complications we were working with after Cleo agreed to have her teeth crowned. The tooth shown below was not going to be kept. So she needed a bridge to replace and replicate this tooth. It should be straighter, as should all the others. And she wanted whiter teeth, too. She was tired of having dark, discolored teeth.

So Cleo wanted a change. And more importantly, there were functional and structural issues, too. The cavities she had developed were large and, after taking into account the size of the existing fillings, there were no other options than to crown these teeth. Also, she didn’t like to smile because her teeth were not straight and, as she put it, not pretty.

If you’ve read any of my other posts you’ll know I’m not a fan of so called ‘instant’ orthodontics. So often a little ‘real’ orthodontics will dramatically improve not only the final esthetics of the case but the longevity, too. However, there are times that the final solution is to ‘fix’ the teeth, and braces are not required.

Let’s look at Cleo. She had many older fillings in her front teeth and recently began to develop cavities around a number of them. Because of the location of one of these cavities she would also have to lose a tooth. She wanted to improve the overall appearance of her front teeth, too. She had always been unhappy with the way they looked.

Here’s another view of the before and after:

With the bonding added to the centrals it becomes obvious that the laterals are too small. After the orthodontist is finished I’ll show the veneer portion of Suzanne’s case.

Here are Suzanne’s teeth before and after the bonding.

The space is significantly closed by simply making the teeth their ideal width. Because of this the orthodontist will have an easier time moving the teeth….less guesswork and less movement. Suzanne is happy about that, too!