For all of us the concept of minimally-invasive cosmetic dentistry sounds very appealing. The dentistry has evolved rapidly over the last 30 years and we are now able to offer our patients more minimally-invasive options than ever before.
Here at London Dental Specialists, we love creating beautiful smiles because of the life-changing impact they have on our patients. However, we are also unshakable in our believe that creating a beautiful smile must never come at the expense of having healthy teeth. This is the main reason why we always carry out our smile enhancement procedures using the steps below.
Sarah is a lovely 25 year old patient who was born without 2 of her upper front teeth. Over the years this led to a significant decrease in her confidence level. She was continuously trying to hide her smile. She was referred to us by her mother whom we had previously treated with porcelain veneers 5 years ago.
The gap created by the missing teeth was not the only problem that Sarah had to experience. The size of her teeth was too small compared to the proportion of her entire face.
A very thorough examination was carried out first by Dr Ope and a detailed and accurate diagnosis of the problems. This allowed Ope and Sarah to have a full and frank discussion about the problems and the solutions available. It also led to a conclusion that in addition to the gaps in her smile, Sarah’s cosmetic problems were also caused by her teeth being too small.
After spending quite a time discussing the reason behind Sarah’s concern about her smile the treatment plan became quite evident. At London Dental Specialists we are fortunate to have access to all the cosmetic specialities so our first port of call was our orthodontist. If teeth are in the wrong position it is always correct to reposition them first because if the teeth are in the wrong position, it is impossible to have healthy, problem-free teeth at the end. Our orthodontist advised Sarah to have fixed braces to reposition teeth into a much better position, this took 18 months to complete.
Sarah: towards the end of orthodontic treatment. You can see that her upper and lower teeth are now visible but the gums are in the wrong position.
At the completion of the orthodontic treatment Sarah’s teeth were better aligned but still short and small, we then carried out a gum lengthening procedure or gummy smiles treatment. A small amount of gum surrounding Sarah’s teeth was surgically removed to reveal the full crown length of the teeth.
Before gum lift on the left and after gum lift on the right. The gums around teeth are akin to the frames around old beautiful paintings. If the gums are not right, the smile will not look right.
The final part of Sarah’s treatment was to change the shape of her teeth. From the original photo you can probably see that Sarah was missing her lateral incisors and we now wanted to reshape the repositioned canine tooth to look more like a lateral incisor. We chose to do this with porcelain veneers (over composite bonding) as they last longer. The final photo with veneers in place shows a perfect smile with no signs of any missing teeth now and great proportions.
Sarah was profoundly impressed with her results and started to love her beautiful smile. We were able to complete this treatment just before Christmas 2020 and when I spoke to her 3 weeks later, she said “I just can’t stop smiling”
At London Dental Specialists we don’t do shortcuts but we assure you that the beautiful smile you can see in the photograph at the end is healthy and will stay like that for very many years to come.
