Apgujeong Dental Clinic: Redoing Front-Tooth Veneers and All-Ceramic Crowns Due to Gum Inflammation

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

After front-tooth veneers or all-ceramic crowns,

there are a few possible side effects.

The best-known one is probably tooth sensitivity.

There's also fracture and debonding,

and another side effect is gum inflammation.

Most of these side effects

appear when the tooth has been reduced excessively,

so

this kind of front-tooth cosmetic treatment needs to be done correctly right from the start.

Gum inflammation has two possible causes.

One is poor maintenance — that is, it can develop when brushing hasn't been done well —

but in many cases it develops because the tooth was reduced too aggressively.

There was enough inflammation for the gums to bleed spontaneously.

Six front teeth had been treated with all-ceramic crowns,

and after the treatment, the gums kept swelling repeatedly,

and now the inflammation won't go away,

with the patient reporting bleeding just from brushing.

Why would that be?

First, to see whether it was simply due to poor gum care,

we carried out gum treatment.

A week has passed since gum treatment at Apgujeong Dream Dental Clinic.

But the gum inflammation hasn't fully cleared up.

In dentistry, inflammation

usually won't go away unless the underlying cause is removed.

Other kinds of inflammation are treated with anti-inflammatories or antibiotics,

but for inflammation in dentistry,

removing the cause is essential in most cases.

In this case, since the cause lay with the all-ceramic crowns,

redoing the treatment was essential.

Using wax, we shaped what the redone result would look like at Apgujeong Dream Dental Clinic,

and prepared to make temporary teeth.

In a redo caused by gum inflammation,

the temporary teeth need to be worn for an extended period.

Once the all-ceramic crowns were removed,

the situation underneath was truly dire.

The amount of tooth that had been reduced was far too much,

and even though these were front teeth,

the root canal treatment had been finished off with metal,

causing severe discoloration of the tooth.

Since there was even a metal post inside the tooth,

treating the discoloration through non-vital tooth whitening or similar methods was no longer possible.

Because the tooth had been reduced too aggressively, extending too far beneath the gumline,

the ceramic had to extend deep beneath the gum,

and even a small design error could irritate the gum

and cause inflammation.

We removed the all-ceramic crowns,

fitted temporary teeth,

and they need to be worn anywhere from two weeks to several months,

and depending on the symptoms,

the temporary teeth may need to be remade several times.

This process is a very important part of treating gum inflammation.

Once the inflammation clears up, we take an impression again

and proceed with fabricating the all-ceramic crowns.

The treatment has been completed.

The shape and color of the teeth matter as well,

but the most important thing is eliminating the gum inflammation.

As you can see in the photos,

the inflammation completely disappeared after gum treatment at Apgujeong Dream Dental Clinic.

Even viewed from various angles,

you can see that the inflammation is completely gone.

What matters in a case like this

is that no matter how well the redo is done,

the inflammation will come back without proper maintenance.

Because the tooth had already been reduced too aggressively,

it's difficult to prevent inflammation entirely.

Consistent maintenance is necessary.

This is a photo taken three years after treatment.

A slight amount of inflammation can be seen in the gums,

but you can see it has cleared up considerably compared to the very first photo.

It's a little disappointing, though — because after treatment there had been no problems at all,

the patient hadn't come back to Apgujeong Dream Dental Clinic even once in three years,

and hadn't had a single scaling done either.

Even so, if this level was maintained,

it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the cause of the inflammation had essentially been eliminated entirely.

Even natural teeth, if left without scaling for about three years,

will tend to develop this level of inflammation,

so this can be seen as the teeth having essentially recovered the function of natural teeth.

Natural beauty

Since 2006, Dream Dental Clinic