Front Teeth Veneer Retreatment Case

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

There are many reasons patients come in for retreatment of old veneers.

In the past, when veneer materials or adhesives weren't as strong,

detachment and fracture were the most common causes.

These days, ceramic materials have improved so much

and bonding strength has also improved, so detachment or fracture rarely happens anymore.

As a result, after long-term use,

the position of the teeth may shift,

or the shape of the gums may change,

and it's far more common for patients to seek retreatment because the aesthetic result has declined.

In particular, due to tooth movement,

when they become misaligned, the teeth look like they're protruding, and

they end up looking far more crooked than the natural teeth did.

This patient already had veneers on the two front teeth.

The problem was that after the veneers, only those two front teeth kept moving further forward,

until they ended up looking like rabbit teeth.

The teeth had also been made too large,

which combined with the protrusion to create that rabbit-tooth look.

The veneers themselves hadn't chipped or come off,

but we decided to redo the veneers for aesthetic reasons.

The most important part of veneer retreatment is removing the existing veneers.

As I mentioned earlier, as veneer materials have improved,

the ceramic has become stronger and the adhesive has improved as well,

which makes removal very difficult.

Veneers are typically removed by grinding them off,

and in many cases this causes damage to the tooth.

Removing a veneer with absolutely no damage to the tooth is essentially impossible,

so the goal is to minimize that damage,

and among the methods available so far, laser-assisted removal

is the one that causes the least damage.

We plan out the treatment in detail before proceeding.

In addition to the two front teeth, we also decided to treat

the lateral incisors on either side with veneers.

By treating all four teeth,

we could transform them into a more even, better-proportioned smile.

This is what the front teeth looked like after the veneers were removed.

So much of the tooth structure had already been shaved away

that it was genuinely a difficult case to see.

We decided to treat the lateral incisors without any tooth reduction.

We brought the protruding, rabbit-like teeth in as far as possible.

This meant the ceramic had to be made extremely thin.

since we couldn't shave down the teeth any further.

Using ceramic as thin as possible,

we fabricated the veneers.

With the ceramic thickness differing from that of the lateral incisors on either side,

matching the veneer color was a fairly delicate task.

The tooth proportions improved,

and the treatment was completed with a brighter tooth color as well.

The trickiest part of this veneer retreatment

was covering the tooth color with thin ceramic

while matching the shade to the other teeth.

The result turned out very well, making this a satisfying treatment.

Experience and know-how are extremely important in veneer retreatment.

Since 2006, Dream Dental Clinic