Are No-Prep Veneers Possible for Everyone?

Hello, I'm Park Jonguk, director of Dream Dental Clinic.

Among patients considering veneer treatment,

many come in having already researched the treatment quite thoroughly online.

Because there's so much medical information available online these days,

there are times I don't even need to explain much myself.

But since some of that medical information can be a bit exaggerated, it can sometimes cause confusion

as I go through explaining the treatment process.

The single most confusing thing, first of all, is the name of the treatment.

Veneer treatment is the name used for this treatment in dental school textbooks.

Occasionally, the same treatment is given a different name and marketed as if it were something else,

which leads to misunderstandings for patients and confusion even among dentists.

Just giving something a different name doesn't make it a different treatment,

and it's unfortunate that so many different names end up making people think they're different treatments.

Another thing is that a good number of patients who want veneer treatment

come in specifically wanting no-prep veneers,

but the cases where that's actually possible are fairly limited.

In the lectures I give to dentists on veneer treatment,

whenever I cover no-prep veneers,

I mention three necessary conditions.

The teeth need to be small

The alignment needs to be good

The teeth must not be protruding

There aren't actually that many cases where all three of these conditions are met.

It's true that no-prep veneers are an excellent treatment,

since there are few side effects and no damage to the tooth,

but the conditions have to be met for the result to come out well.

This is a case that fits well with the three conditions mentioned earlier.

The teeth are very small, the alignment is fairly good,

and rather than protruding, the teeth are actually in a retruded bite.

The length of the teeth varies somewhat,

but since the teeth needed to become longer than they currently were, this wasn't a major issue.

The space between the teeth also isn't a problem for no-prep veneers.

In fact, the larger the space, the more favorable it is for no-prep veneers.

Rather than an awkward, in-between amount of space, it's better to have enough space for the ceramic to fit properly.

In any veneer treatment, the preparatory work is extremely important.

A precise diagnostic wax-up is the process that lets us anticipate both the start and the end of treatment.

For more details on this process,

please see the link below.

Using this wax-up,

we make a temporary veneer.

You might wonder why a temporary veneer is needed if it's a no-prep case.

The bigger significance of the temporary veneer is that it lets us anticipate the outcome of the treatment.

It lets us see, in terms of size, shape, volume, and proportion,

how the patient's own teeth will change.

The color and translucency of the tooth can't yet be reproduced at this stage.

There are two ways to fabricate the ceramic.

One is a method made by human hand.

This inevitably requires a great deal of experience and skill.

It's the method that can produce natural, beautiful veneers.

At Dream Dental Clinic, we use this handmade process to fabricate veneers that are extremely thin

while still being beautiful and natural.

The other method is made by computer.

Because the current computer-based methods for making veneers are still limited,

the results tend to look fairly similar whenever this method is used.

There isn't much difference in skill between clinics using this method,

and the result tends to feel quite awkward and artificial.

Please see the link below for the difference between the two methods.

We placed the finished veneers on the teeth, half at a time, and took a photo.

You can see the change in tooth size.

Since the teeth were originally small,

it's better for the teeth to become larger.

The treatment is now complete.

The full range of a natural tooth's expression

has been captured here, even though these are no-prep veneers.

The varied coloring and translucent feel of the teeth are well preserved.

It's very difficult to achieve this much range of expression with ceramic this thin.

Achieving this level of expression requires a great deal of experience and know-how.

Even the texture of the tooth surface reflects the beauty of a natural tooth,

and you can see it was captured well.

The same-day method, or computer-made veneers,

simply cannot match this.

Natural Beauty

Since 2006, Dream Dental Clinic — No-Prep Veneers