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:

Here’s the final result.  The patient was SO excited to have a tooth again. And look how natural it appears.  The process takes a long time, but a dental implant is still the ideal way to replace missing teeth in many, many situations.

We were not able to save the natural tooth that was originally located in this position.  You can see why here.  Now the implant has been placed and healed, so it’s time to finish with the post and crown.

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.

Here’s the tooth with most of the cavity cleaned out. It was REALLY big! And again, no symptoms with hot, cold, or bite. The ONLY way to have found this was with a dental x-ray.

But, when the tooth is opened up, look what’s inside:

This was NOT evident when you looked at the tooth (see below) and was only found with an x-ray.

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:

We tried to save her current, new crown with some bonding and, at the same time add back to the other tooth. This was a quick, painless repair and got her on her way and back to work in no time!