Dental patients are paying more attention to how their smiles look as they live longer and, through better dental hygiene, often keep their teeth longer than their grandparents did.
Their desire to look attractive, combined with many dentists’ interest in restoring rather than extracting teeth, brought a boom in cosmetic dentistry during the past 10 or so years.
A growing number of products make restoration more possible, such as onlays that attach to the top of the teeth as an alternative to crowns in some patients.
There are veneers, thin shells that bond to the front surfaces of teeth; inlays, a smaller version of onlays; and fillings that look almost like natural teeth.
Computers and software let dentists see a 3-D view, even a panoramic one, of patients’ gums and teeth after digital X-rays are taken inside the mouth.
Cosmetic dentistry no longer is reserved for trauma victims or the rich. It’s become a major part of the practices of many general dentists…Rather than grinding down much of a damaged tooth to put in a traditional porcelain metal crown, for example, dentists have the option of onlays.
There’s been a divide during the past decade between dentists embracing tooth-conserving measures and those favoring a traditional approach like full crowns.
Dental implants and cosmetic procedures, including crowns and onlays, are about half of each of the dentists’ practices.
Onlays cap the biting surface of teeth. The material used is as close in color as possible to the color of the natural teeth…
New materials have been designed for strength as well as appearance.
“The new materials out today are setting cosmetic dentistry on fire,” Pate said, praising lithium disilicate, a porcelain-like material.
It lets dentists to do more than they can with the older design of porcelain-fused-to-metal crowns, he said.
There also are mixtures of porcelain, glass and resin…read more
