Natural vs Enhanced Smile?



Last week a young woman came in for a bonding consult. She has a beautiful smile . She has a tiny chip on #9 that can be easily fixed with some minor bonding but still I had suggested she come in an have a consult about using a small amount of additive bonding to make her incisal embrasures smaller. It is easy to preview this change in about 10 minutes using composite that I apply without acid etching  the teeth. That way I can set the composite but not bond it permanently because her enamel is not etched. I can remove it at the end of the session by tugging at it with a sharp instrument. It slides off since the enamel still has its natural glazed surface so the composite is easy to peel off afterwards.


This is the enhanced version of her smile achieved by carefully adding it to her incisal embrasures and sculpting it with a little prime and bond on a plastic instrument (  a flat metal blade instrument that is good for sculpting). Now this is only a dress rehearsal and the actual changes in their bonded form take me more time and usually  cost around $650 per tooth involved, but it takes much less time and money than porcelain veneers. I find that these additive changes involve no real preparation and are quite durable when not placed in stress bearing surfaces.

I took these photos with my iPhone 7 camera and I texted them to my patient immediately. A short while later after she had left the office she called me up and let me know the pictures hadn't arrived. She gave me her cell number again and it turned out I had one of the digits wrong . I resent the pictures and this time she received them.  The next morning I was embarrassed when I received the following text : "wrong number lol- nice teeth" .......

from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2018/01/natural-vs-enhanced-smile.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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