I have enamel hypoplasia and it makes it embarrassing for me to smile. I’ve been told there are some cosmetic treatments for this through a dentist. What are some ways I can fix this?
Thank you in advance. I hope I can smile again soon.
Andrea
Dear Andrea,
I am glad you wrote. There are a couple of possible solutions for you depending on the severity of the hypoplasia. For those who are unaware of what hypoplasia is, it is a defect where the enamel does not fully form on your teeth. Sometimes it is caused by a disease you have while your teeth are still forming. In other cases, it is just a genetic defect.
The results can vary from mild to severe hypoplasia. Mild hypoplasia is pictured above. In this case, I would suggest dental bonding to repair the issue. This is done by the dentist drilling out the surface of the white spots and then filling the area with a high gloss composite material.
In some cases, the amount of hypoplasia is quite severe as pictured directly below.
In this case, you would want to do porcelain veneers or porcelain crowns. Veneers would be the idea, but there are times, such as when the lingual surfaces (inside surfaces) of the teeth are severely damaged, like in the teeth that are shown above, when you would be better served to use dental crowns.
Don’t get crowns if you don’t need to, though. Some dentists who are not comfortable placing porcelain veneers because they do not have adequate cosmetic dentistry training will push their patients toward crowns because that is a procedure they are comfortable with. However, that requires you to have your completely healthy tooth structure ground down to nubs. You do not want to do that unless it was absolutely necessary.
This blog is brought to you by Baton Rouge Dentist Dr. Steven Collins.