Cosmetic Dentistry

Or the story of how three techniques (alignment, bleaching and bonding), when skilfully combined, can save you money and give you better results than just one (wall to wall teeth veneers)…

Before alignment, bleaching and bonding

After alignment, bleaching and bonding

Alignment Bleaching and Bonding vs Wall to wall teeth veneers

Here in Essex, Cosmetic dentistry is evolving. A decade ago when decent porcelain veneers came along cosmetic dentists were very keen on placing lots of veneers – in 2010 there are still a lot of veneers being placed by cosmetic dentists, but here at Winning Smile we believe that the Age of the Veneer is on the wane.

A colleague of mine Dr Tif Qureshi (www.dentalelegance.co.uk) recently addressed the profession with his ‘evolved’ concept of Cosmetic Dentistry – updated to reflect the progress in dental knowledge and treatments within the profession and changing attitudes among our patients. Tif brought the Inman Aligner to the UK from the States and combines this brilliant little brace with 2 other treatments to produce significant dental transformation without the need to grind away good teeth as is the case with veneers.

Tif’s concept is called ABB: ‘Alignment, Bleaching and Bonding’

Alignment

Using the inman aligner the front teeth can be lined up orthodontically in as little as 10 weeks

Bleaching

The cosmetic dentist’s best friend – professional teeth whitening to noticeably ‘lift’ the colour of all the teeth

Bonding

The addition of cosmetic filling material (like our Italian HFO system) where necessary to add the finishing touches.

Here at Winning Smiles we have been using the bleaching and bonding techniques for years and Michael Fennell one of our orthodontists has been doing the straightening. We are no strangers to these ideas. But Tif has put a label on it for us, and we think people will be hearing of this costmetic dental technique a lot more.

As always my regular readers will notice that I like to bullet point the pros and cons

ABB Advantages over Teeth Veneers

• No grinding off of the front surfaces of the teeth
• No porcelain veneers that can fracture easily and begin to lose their looks after a few years – ABB simply enhances your own teeth
• Cost – ABB costs around £2000 at Winning Smiles, 6-8 veneers cost £3600-£4800!
• ABB is one hit: veneers usually need to be replaced every 10 years or so (think of the cost implication of that)
• ABB is kind to the teeth – occasionally a veneered tooth will need a root filling because the nerve reacts badly to the grinding process

Disadvantages of ABB vs Veneers

• Very badly discoloured teeth or teeth with lots of visible fillings may be better treated with crowns or veneers
• Teeth that have always been the wrong shape (eg too small, or misshaped) usually benefit from veneers/crowns despite the drawback
• ABB will take on average 12 weeks – veneers can be done in 2-4 weeks
  Jodie Marsh lookalikes need porcelain veneers for that level of whiteness

Can you spot the grotty ‘white’ filling in the middle of the picture? Believe it or not this filling was not done at the turn of the century but completed a couple of years ago!

If you look at the tooth to the left of the one with the grotty ‘white’ filling you may be surprised to know that 15 mins previous to this photo it looked exactly like the grotty one. We are replacing this chap’s ugly white fillings with nice shiny new ones that look their age (ie well into the 21st century)…

People often ask if we enjoy dentistry. But who wouldn’t like being able to take out that grotty old filling and replace it with a nice shiny new one. We can get this invisible effect using our beautiful italian white filling materials, and a little bit of technique to go with it!!

Ok here’s the rub:

Grotty white filling in the middle of the picture
Estimated cost £20
Estimated time involved 5 mins
No guarantees
Replace every 2 years?

Shiny new Italian composite filling on the left
Time involved 15 mins
Cost £70
Cost of filling material: at least double that of the cheap stuff
5 year guarantee.

Quality dentistry costs less over time and makes you feel good.

Just for fun

Winning Smiles spot the crown competition take 2:
Clue: there is one crown in this picture, can you tell which one?

Spot the crown

Some of the simplest jobs are the most satisfying.

Sometimes its the little jobs that make such a difference.

This chap said he had been hiding his smile for years. His main issue was the general yellowness of his teeth and an old filling in the upper central incisor.

We carried out some (minor) bleaching and replaced that old filling with a new one using Enamel Plus HFO material with Dr Lorenzo Vanini’s technique – see our best white fillings blog article.

Not sure if these pictures do it justice (it may depend on your computer settings). The real-life difference was more remarkable, but I’m sure you can see the difference anyway.

Dental implants are an increasingly popular choice for my patients as I’ve been doing a lot of them recently.

So I thought it was about time I posted a few case studies. Here they are:

Tooth replacement and smile makeover: Case Study

A full set of replacement teeth: Case Study

Implant bridge: Case Study

Implant retained dentures: Case Study

I’d love to hear what you think – or if you have any questions about dental implants at all, please do post something in the comment box below.

I thought it worth jotting a few words down about this one – it’s such a common problem for people, and frankly so easily fixed (without breaking the bank)!

Here at Winning Smiles we’ve been closing gaps between teeth for years, using our Italian composite-filling system (the same white filling system we use for tooth decay) – see our best white fillings blog article.

The beauty of using ‘Cosmetic bonding’ with a top class tooth-coloured filling system (like Enamel Plus) is that:

• the teeth don’t need to be cut or ground down;
• it’s over and done with in one visit (no waiting for crowns or veneers to come back from the lab);
• it’s painless, really, I don’t even use anaesthetic for this technique!

So what are the drawbacks?

Nothing too serious really, I recommend having them polished once or twice a year to maintain their ‘lustre’ and I usually do the polishing during routine 6 month examination appointments (at no extra charge).

They can get chipped/broken, but so can veneers, the difference is that these bonded build-ups can be repaired seamlessly (chipped veneers have to be replaced completely).

And all for around £400. Something worth talking about?  In fact, it’s such a popular treatment I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned it before!

Here’s an example of the before and after pictures:

Many people are familiar with the techniques used to whiten teeth from the outside, but I doubt many of you know that discoloured teeth can also be bleached from the inside, out!

There are times when the teeth are discoloured from within rather than from run of the mill red wine and coffee stains on the outside. It usually involves one or two front teeth (upper or lower) that have been root-filled in the past and have become severely discoloured (brown, yellow or orange).

When these badly discoloured teeth are combined with a generalised yellow appearance of the other teeth (from years of staining) this makes for the hand-over-mouth, or lip over teeth, smile that so many patients seem to put up with.

Standard dental bleaching involves either using trays at home or a special light source used in the dental chair (see my teeth whitening blog for views on which works best). However it is also possible to bleach the inside of these very dark (root-filled) teeth, and at Winning Smiles we use a technique that combines both bleaching the outside of all the teeth and bleaching the inside of those extra-orange ones. The results are quite spectacular and often avoids the need for drilling and crowning these individual problem-teeth.

In the photo, two of these front teeth were ‘off-the-scale’ orange, the rest were just a creamy shade of yellow from normal staining. The patient had 10 days to go before his dream wedding in the caribbean. This is how he looked after a week of Inside-Out-Bleaching. Can you tell which ones used to be orange?

If you look really closely, two of the teeth are whiter than the others – yep, you guessed it, those are the ones that were orange a week ago!

More work inspired in Italy, crafted in Romford, Essex. We’re proud of this one

Readers are invited to guess which one is the filling, and which one is the crown.

I would take the opportunity to mention that our white fillings are always guaranteed to stay in.

So with this (newish) website we wanted to enable people to leave their own reviews on our dental practice – both good and bad on this reviews webpage

We didn’t exactly push this facility, it felt a bit like fishing for compliments – but someone just pointed out that people might actually want to have the opportunity. So, for any of our existing patients please find the facility in the reviews section in the above drop down menu, and click the link. You can enter feedback directly into the form.

Our latest colleague at Winning Smiles, Damien Reilly, had some positive feedback recently, and because it is directly about his dental sedation – which addresses a lot of people’s desire for ‘painless dentistry’ – we thought we’d produce an excerpt here.

I came in for 4 hours sedation with your FANTASTIC sedationist Doctor Damian. It was recommended as I needed 10 upper crowns and surgery to even up my gum lines. This involved a very lengthy treatment, which thankfully I was not aware of. Amazingly I was told to eat and drink before treatment. The drug process to put me to sleep was not in the least bit traumatic. It only involved a tiny needle, with just one drop at a time of the drug. When I came round, I did not feel unwell in the least (just not quite with it). It was a totally stress free experience, and I recommend it to anyone undergoing lengthy/complex work.

Ruth is extremely generous in terms of her comments, but also the time taken to feed back on this site.

We’re just a bit worried now that it looks like we’re paying her instead of the other way round!

Teeth Whitening in Romford and Brentwood (Essex, UK) has grown hugely in popularity this year – if our diary is anything to go by, or perhaps our dental practice is just getting more of the share.

Whichever the case, when we thought of generating more publicity, because everyone deserves to know more about Winning Smiles, the thought of a prize draw popped into someone’s head.

So – here it is, the free teeth whitening draw. Enter online via the link.

Only. We’re not sure that people still go in for these things. Have the public grown cynical of offers? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

The main point is that it’s free to enter, no strings, no massive postal bumpf will arrive, and no spammy email every other day. So what’s to lose?

If you can think of anything, feel free to leave a comment, else perhaps just go ahead and enter. Vote with your feet….for your teeth.