A Recommended Apgujeong Station Clinic: All-Ceramic Crown Retreatment and Peg Lateral Treatment

Hello.

I'm Park Jonguk, a board-certified specialist in conservative dentistry at Dream Dental Clinic, a dental clinic recommended near Apgujeong Station.

When treating teeth, there is treatment done for functional purposes,

and treatment done for cosmetic purposes.

Molars are mostly treated for function rather than for looks.

For example, when a tooth has to be extracted due to decay or gum disease,

an implant is placed in its spot.

This kind of treatment focuses mainly on function rather than looks.

A tooth that's had root canal treatment mostly needs a crown.

This is because the tooth could otherwise crack.

For a molar, treatment focuses on mastication — the chewing function — rather than esthetics.

Front teeth are a different story.

Their esthetic role matters far more than their chewing function.

While preserving the basic chewing function of the front teeth,

more emphasis has to be placed on esthetics and pronunciation.

Since the direction of treatment differs like this,

the diagnosis before treatment must reflect that,

and the tooth reduction needs to precisely match the purpose.

The patient wanted treatment for esthetic reasons and, while searching for a recommended dental clinic near Apgujeong Station, came to us.

Her main goal was to correct a peg lateral.

On examination, one of her front teeth already had an all-ceramic crown.

The color and translucency were expressed quite well,

but there was a problem with asymmetry.

The length was too long, and the width was different too.

With the peg lateral as well, the size and shape differed far too much between the two sides.

The difference in size between the front tooth and the peg lateral was also not easy to overcome.

It would be ideal to reduce the teeth as little as possible,

but when the size difference between teeth is this severe, the reduction has to be adjusted accordingly.

For the peg lateral, almost no reduction was needed,

but if the front tooth were treated without sufficient reduction,

it would be hard to achieve a satisfying esthetic result.

We shape the teeth in wax to plan out how the treatment will go.

This process is called a wax-up.

At this stage, we determine how much tooth needs to be reduced,

and test in advance how to reduce it in a way that affects the tooth the least.

When we removed the all-ceramic crown,

we found that the tooth had already been reduced far too much.

For the peg laterals, we only reduced enough to remove surface staining,

while for the front tooth, we reduced it because it was too large and needed to be made smaller.

Using the wax-up, we made temporary teeth,

and during this process, we discussed the size, volume, and proportions between the teeth extensively with the patient.

We fine-tune the shape while talking with the patient about which teeth look too large or too long.

Creating a tooth with an esthetically translucent feel

through veneers is not an easy task.

With a crown, the ceramic is thick enough that this is fairly easy to achieve,

but with veneers, the ceramic is only about 0.1-0.5mm thick,

so it isn't easy to create varied expression within that thin layer.

Creating this kind of natural shape, color, and translucency within such a thin layer

is the result of the years of experience unique to Dream Dental Clinic, a dental clinic recommended near Apgujeong Station.

Since 2006, Dream Dental Clinic