Archive for the ‘Porcelain Crowns’ Category

I’m a grinder, and I want a smile makeover. How about Snap-on Smile?

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

I am looking for an excellent cosmetic dentist. I am considering crowns for my front teeth. Since I grind my teeth, I don’t think porcelain veneers are a good option. I have seen some people with crowns however that appear grey at the gumline. I don’t want that at all. How do you feel about Snap-on Smile?
- Gerard from Ohio

Gerard,
Snap-on-Smile will not give you a beautiful smile. It may give an acceptable smile, but your teeth will be a little bulky, and you won’t have that natural translucency of real teeth, plus some other drawbacks. The Snap-on Smile is a low-cost option for a smile makeover. You need to have low expectations for the Snap-on Smile or you’ll be disappointed.

You do have to be really careful if you grind your teeth. You don’t need to rule out porcelain veneers, as long as you are going to an excellent cosmetic dentist who has a lot of experience with smile makeovers. The dentist may have to make them so that they stay out of the way of your grinding patterns. That can be done. And you may need to wear a night guard to protect the veneers at night. We have often worked with grinders and clenchers and they have a hard time believing that wearing this protection at night helps, because they say things always break during the day. But the stress and microcracks that are created at night weaken the teeth and the porcelain, and so the night guard can be excellent protection. But again, it depends on the patient, and each case needs to be handled individually. And you really need an excellent cosmetic dentist with a great deal of experience.

As far as porcelain crowns, that would also be an option for you. The dark line that is associated with crowns is only associated with porcelain fused to metal crowns. An expert cosmetic dentist with many years of experience, again, will be able to place these in such a way as to keep them from breaking. One disadvantage of crowns if you are a grinder or a clencher is that the front teeth are weakened at the neck of the tooth, and, again depending on your grinding patterns, it may make it so that the tooth is more susceptible to breaking off entirely.

You want a dentist with expertise in cosmetic dentistry and in occlusion, and a dentist who is older, say in his late 40s at least, because they will have more long-term experience in doing total smile makeovers. A dentist who has done smile makeovers but not over that long a time period hasn’t yet seen how these makeovers in patients who grind their teeth hold up over time.

This blog sponsored by Colorado Springs TMJ dentist Dr. Joseph Rota.

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All the dental work is different colors.

Monday, November 29th, 2010

I recently had root canals and 7 porcelain with metal crowns done on my upper teeth, in addition to upper and lower valplast with metal removable partial dentures. I told my dentist that tooth #7 looked slanted and she used a tool to reshape the bottom of the tooth. She also did tooth #8. I told her that the two teeth now feel rough, not smooth. A very uncomfortable feeling.

Then on tooth #10 the crown is wider, shorter and whiter than my other front tooth. She sold me a zoom whitening pen to whiten my natural front tooth. 2 months later and no change in color, she tells me I lost enamel on that tooth and wants to do a porcelain crown. With the work that was done on my front teeth, they don’t match in shade or shape. My partials are also a different shade. Can they be redone without a extra charge? 10 months later and I have 3 different shades of teeth when I smile. I contacted my insurance company and they said she was already paid for the work. Any advice on how to correct the work that has been done?

Thank you.
- Catherine from Brooklyn

Catherine,
I’m not sure I’m following everything that’s wrong with your case. Depending on exactly what’s wrong, there may not be a lot you can do about your situation.

If your dentist can’t match colors well, or the teeth she makes have funny shapes, that’s not something you can force – you can’t make her get it right.

Here’s the problem. Dentists are trained to fix things. And the whole profession is concentrated on fixing things so they work. The problems you are mentioning are mostly issues you have with how the work LOOKS. But if the work she did is functional, then it’s generally considered to be within the standard of care and you have little legal recourse.

For most dentists, appearance-related issues aren’t critical. If your teeth are basically white and lined up basically straight, then for many dentists that is good enough.

What you seem to be telling me is that you want your smile to be beautiful. But to get beautiful cosmetic dentistry, you have to pick a dentist that is on your same wavelength and for whom the appearance of the work is a high priority. In other words, you want an artistically-inclined dentist, a cosmetic dentist. Once the work is done, you really don’t have any legal ability to force the dentist to make it be beautiful.

Then, being in Brooklyn, I’m not sure there are any excellent cosmetic dentists in Brooklyn. There are some excellent ones in Manhattan, and some in Queens, but for some reason, the good cosmetic dentists may not want to open practices in Brooklyn.

Now, as far as your particular problems. The smoothness shouldn’t be a big issue. It isn’t really hard to polish porcelain, though it’s possible your dentist doesn’t know how to do that. I would start by asking her to do that, if she can.

In summary, I would recommend that you get a second opinion from an excellent cosmetic dentist in Queens, Manhattan, or on Long Island, letting them take a look, and tell you what can be done to fix what you have. I’d check with the website www.mynewsmile.com – they recommend cosmetic dentists all over the country. It may be that another dentist can work with you to persuade your dentist to give some kind of refund or partial refund, and you can have some of this work re-done. From what you’ve told me, I don’t have a lot of hope that this dentist of yours can make this work beautiful. Some dentists simply can’t.

Links: Read about getting porcelain crowns in Colorado.

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Porcelain crowns for front teeth are causing lots of trouble.

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Well my sr. year i saved enough money to get my teeth fixed. one of my teeth in the front was cracked. my two front teeth are porcelain crowns all the way around. my dentist put in the normal crowns at first but this wasnt what we had discussed so he replaced them with the porcelain all around. well now after 8 months my teeth underneath them are dead. could the reason my teeth are dead be from the dentist? i take pride in my teeth i had braces for 5 years and i brush and floss my teeth everyday. i havent had any problems before. i’m afraid i wont be able to pay for what is a head for my teeth.
- Kendra from Kentucky

Kendra,
Ooooh, this sounds like a tough situation.

Yes, the reason your teeth died is undoubtedly because of the crowns. Now you need root canals, and you should also have glass fiber posts placed inside the teeth to strengthen them, because the next problem you could be facing down the road is that the teeth will just break off at the gumline and then you’ll need to go to implants. Not metal posts. Glass fiber posts. This is important. If your dentist is one whose first thought would be to put porcelain fused to metal crowns on two front teeth, he may not be very familiar with glass fiber posts. A glass fiber post will flex with the tooth and thus will reduce the risk of later root fracture.

If you’re around age twenty or younger, your front teeth would have large pulps. When you do a crown on a front tooth, you have to remove quite a bit of tooth structure, and there is a risk of getting close to the pulp and damaging the pulp. And if you had the crown procedures done twice, that would increase the risk of damage. That’s not to say that the dentist did anything wrong, but at a minimum, you should have been warned that this was a risk.

Another factor in your case is that your dentist clearly didn’t feel comfortable doing all porcelain crowns. Dentists that know how to do all porcelain crowns will far prefer them for front teeth, because they are so beautiful and natural looking compared to the porcelain fused to metal crowns. So this suggests to me that maybe he wasn’t all that familiar with the proper bonding procedures for this type of crown. So maybe, just maybe, something wasn’t done right in bonding them.

I think this would be something that this dentist should take responsibility for. Approach him with that, explain how your finances are limited, and ask him to help with this.

And, if he is the one to do this followup work, be careful about the posts. Ask how many glass fiber posts he has placed. Pin him down. If he doesn’t use this type of post routinely, I would have another dentist do that part – a dentist who does a lot of cosmetic dentistry. If he has placed a couple dozen or more, to me that would indicate a satisfactory comfort level with this type of post.

I wish you the best. Take these next steps carefully, because you’re a long way from out of the woods on this.

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Porcelain crowns in front don’t match

Monday, April 12th, 2010

I had recently all-porcelain crowns placed on my 4 front upper teeth and one of them looks darker. I had root canal done on that tooth long time ago and it was dark. My dentist knew that I wanted to make it lighter and I thought that what I’ll get by placing crown on it. The only thing she mentioned was that that tooth might be a little darker at the gum line because i had root canal done. Was there any way to cover that darkness?

Thank you,
Vicki from Ohio

Vicki,
Yes, there is a way that the crown on this root canal tooth could have been made light enough to match the other front teeth. But this is probably beyond the skill level of your dentist. There are opaquers that can be incorporated into the porcelain, or that the dentist can use underneath the porcelain. For cases like this, where there is a strong mis-match of the underlying color, we like to create a base on the dark tooth that was the same color as the other teeth, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about the laboratory technician knowing just how much opaquer to use in the porcelain. Other cosmetic dentists simply take a photograph of the prepared teeth, showing the color discrepancy, forward that photo to the lab technician, and rely on the technician to block out that undesirable color.

Dentists are generally trained to fix things that are broken and aren’t artists. And most dentists simply aren’t that passionate about making their work look beautiful and absolutely natural.

There is a website that recommends cosmetic dentists all over the country, mynewsmile.com, and they are very picky about who they list. Dr. Rota is their recommended Colorado Springs cosmetic dentist. If it’s important enough to you, you could go to one of the expert cosmetic dentists on their list. Otherwise, you’ll need to live with the result until the crowns fail. Most dental insurance plans give crowns a minimum lifespan of five years before they will consider helping to pay for a replacement crown.

Colorado Springs Dentist

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