Gangnam No-Prep Veneers: Naturalness Is the Whole Point

When it comes to veneer treatment, what people worry about most

is the reduction of the tooth.

Most other tissues in the body heal.

Wounds close, and broken bones knit back together.

Teeth are different.

Once damaged, a tooth is tissue that doesn't recover on its own.

When a tooth chips or breaks, rather than promoting healing the way other tissue does,

it has to be treated right away with prosthetic treatment — replacing the damaged part with another material.

That's why reducing a tooth in a case where it isn't essential

can't really be called a good thing.

If treatment is being done because a tooth is broken or chipped,

that becomes an essential procedure.

If a tooth has to be extracted due to periodontal disease or decay,

a prosthetic solution such as an implant becomes essential.

This is where the dilemma of esthetic treatment arises.

If a tooth's role is limited to eating and chewing food,

then as long as it performs that function, treatment that damages the tooth shouldn't be done.

But for the front teeth, there's something more important than the chewing function.

That's beauty.

The esthetic importance of the front teeth hardly needs to be emphasized.

When comedians come out with seaweed stuck on their front teeth, people burst out laughing immediately.

Even a small change in the front teeth shows up to people as an esthetic flaw.

Everyone naturally has a desire to look more attractive.

If the front teeth aren't attractive, you could say they're missing their most basic function — beauty.

That said, wanting to look prettier can't justify damaging the tooth without limits.

Esthetic treatment, like every other kind of dental treatment, has to be done in a way that minimizes damage to the tooth.

For this reason, Gangnam no-prep veneers can be called the best possible esthetic treatment.

Since most veneer side effects originate from tooth reduction,

Gangnam no-prep veneers, which involve no reduction, can be said to be that much free of side effects.

This patient came in with good alignment but problems with tooth shape and color.

Fundamentally, the teeth were fairly yellow, and all of them were small.

A tooth smaller than its normal size is called a peg or undersized tooth.

Summarizing what needed to be improved in this case:

the teeth are small overall,

there's an undersized tooth,

the shape of the front teeth is awkward,

the teeth are yellow overall.

There was one more problem on top of that.

It's usually described as being over-retracted.

The teeth were tilted lingually.

They were angled inward relative to their original position.

So there were five problems that needed solving.

All of this actually made for optimal conditions for no-prep veneers.

The teeth are small,

the alignment is good,

and the teeth are not protruding —

these three are the absolute conditions for no-prep veneers.

It would be great if every case could be made beautiful with no-prep veneers,

but it only works when specific conditions are met.

Before treatment, we use wax to test out how the treatment will go.

If you ask which step is the most important in the treatment process,

I would say it's this wax-up process.

Using the tooth shaped out of wax like this,

and using a material called resin directly on the actual tooth,

we can test in advance how the tooth will change.

With the resin temporary tooth made this way,

we consult with the patient on what shape to go with.

With Gangnam no-prep veneers, the tooth size will always end up larger.

Whether that larger size looks awkward,

whether the proportions between the teeth are fine,

since the teeth end up coming outward, whether the degree of that is acceptable —

we need to discuss all of this and continually adjust the resin temporary tooth accordingly

to arrive at a tooth shape the patient is happy with.

We move into fabrication with ceramic.

Even though the ceramic is quite thin,

every characteristic of a natural tooth has to be brought out within it.

Recently, one-day veneers have been becoming more common.

They're made by milling a ceramic block using CAD/CAM,

and if this method is done carefully and properly, one at a time, it can produce a veneer of a certain level of quality,

but rushing to finish it all in a single day makes the result look far too artificial and awkward.

Especially for no-prep cases, this one-day method is essentially impossible.

Since it's made through milling, the ceramic has to be above a certain thickness no matter what,

which doesn't suit extremely thin no-prep cases.

This is the appearance before the veneers were bonded on.

I took this photo with the veneer placed on just one side, to check the change in the tooth.

As I mentioned, because the teeth were so small to begin with,

the teeth end up much larger,

and the previously over-retracted teeth come out much further.

It's a bit brighter than the original tooth,

but I gave it a much stronger sense of translucency.

There's a clear difference in the level of the result

compared to the one-day method, which finishes the whole tooth in a single, opaque color.

What matters especially is the sides of the tooth, which are made extremely thin.

Only when this part wraps around well does the veneer become high quality.

Since this part is fabricated at around 0.1mm,

the one-day method simply can't match it here either.

Because the ceramic is so thin, a lot of care is also needed even during bonding.

With a bright, translucent feel and rich detail all preserved,

the result was finished to bring out the feel of a beautiful natural tooth as much as possible.

Long experience is what matters most for Gangnam no-prep veneers.

Since 2006, Dream Dental Clinic