Retreating Awkward Front-Tooth Veneers into a Natural Result

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

Front-tooth veneers are a cosmetic treatment aimed at making teeth beautiful.

What counts as beautiful is quite a subjective matter.

Since the standard and what's wanted differ from person to person,

treatment needs to match the individual purpose.

Depending on how a veneer is fabricated for retreatment,

there are two methods: hand-crafted

and computer-made.

Recently, in many areas, the computer-made method

has started to show even better results in some respects,

but in the aesthetic domain of dentistry,

the hand-crafted method still shows far superior results.

As technology keeps advancing, at some point

computer-based work may pull ahead,

but for now the gap is still quite large.

These are veneers and all-ceramic crowns done a long time ago.

Looking at this case, you can see a truly wide range of problems.

Both the shape and color of the teeth were very unnatural,

and beyond that, the gums had been damaged badly enough to cause periodontitis.

The teeth had been made without any regard for harmony with the face,

so all of them ended up considerably tilted.

The gum height also varied far too much,

making this quite a challenging veneer retreatment case that had to address all of these issues at once.

We carry out an analysis of the current teeth.

We need to think through how to address the tilted teeth

and how to resolve the difference in gum height.

We also need to check the bite against the lower teeth.

Since the gums had already deteriorated,

treatment proceeds with gum health in mind as well.

This is the state after removing the front-tooth veneers and all-ceramic crowns.

It made me wonder whether treatment really needed to go this far.

This is a case that called for orthodontic treatment,

yet it looks as though tooth reshaping was forced instead.

I don't think that was the right approach.

The retreatment of the front-tooth veneers and all-ceramic crowns has been completed.

The existing teeth had all been a single dull, white color throughout —

a very awkward set of teeth.

We gave the shape natural dimensionality

and added a variety of shades area by area.

The translucent feel at the edge of the veneer

is also something achievable only by hand.

Before and after the veneer retreatment,

the feel is completely different.

From a state that was artificial and awkward,

with nothing really done properly,

it was finished into teeth that look natural, suit the gums well,

and are beautiful.

Looking at cases like this,

it makes me think it might be wise to steer clear of clinics that rely heavily on exaggerated or misleading advertising.

Natural beauty

Since 2006, Dream Dental Clinic