Cosmetic Dentistry

Those who practice conventional dentistry focus on dental health. Those who practice cosmetic dentistry heed patient's concerns about dental health, but they also invite patient comments on mouth aesthetics, and complaints about malfunction of the mouth or teeth.

The face on which one finds a white and well-formed smile is generally considered to be an aesthetically pleasing face. For that reason, patients who request cosmetic dentistry often seek to obtain such a smile. In many cases, the person doing the cosmetic dentistry must do no more than perform a series of teeth whitening procedures.

A patient who has been the victim of an earlier accident, an accident that injured his or her mouth, might need more than a simple teeth whitening. Such a patient might need an enameloplasty (also called odontoplasty). During that procedure, the dentist removes a section of tooth enamel, in order to create a better-looking tooth.

When a patient has a cracked tooth, a chipped tooth or a crooked tooth, that patient might look for a way to re-shape or re-position that tooth. An expert in cosmetic dentistry can use the procedure known as contouring to carry-out such a transformation.

Contouring also provides the dentist with a way to make a tooth look longer. In addition, the cosmetic dentist depends on contouring to hide what can happen when a cosmetic procedure has corrected for overlapping teeth. The removal of that overlap can produce a pair of asymmetrical teeth. Contouring can restore the symmetry.

When a patient presents a dentist with serious deformities on his or her teeth, the cosmetic dentist might choose to correct that deformity using either bonding or veneers. Bonding calls for the placement of an enamel-like substance on the surface of the teeth. Once bonded to a tooth, that enamel-like material must be shaped and polished. Veneers are pre-shaped laminates that are bonded to the teeth.

Suppose that a patient sitting in a dental chair has a missing tooth. How can a cosmetic dentist help that patient? In that case, the dentist would no doubt initiate the procedure used to make a dental bridge. The cosmetic dentist designs a false tooth and fuses it to two porcelain crowns. The cosmetic dentist has placed those crowns on the teeth that were on each side of the opening in the patient's line of teeth.

Earlier in the article there appeared the mention of asymmetrical teeth. While removal of an overlap can cause paired teeth to look asymmetrical, jaw problems can also destroy the expected symmetry of a patient's teeth. Cosmetic dentistry can help a patient to regain more symmetrical teeth.

The cosmetic dentist performs what is called a gum lift. Such a lift is used to raise and re-sculpt the line of the gum in the mouth. The changes in the gum then allow the teeth coming from the gum to look longer and more symmetrical.

Humans have been given 32 teeth for a reason. Humans chew with those teeth. Cosmetic dentistry can help a patient to have 32 good teeth.