3 Quick and Simple Aesthetic Dental Procedures That Will Leave You Smiling
No one has perfect teeth. Whether due to injury, diet, habit, or just bad luck, most people would rather their teeth be different, ranging from a small filing-down of a slightly protruding tooth, to a complete reshuffling. But, when you go in for dental work, how do you avoid ending up with a set of teeth which appears clearly artificial?
Offering more of a natural and healthy ideal of a smile, aesthetic dentistry takes a different route to achieving beauty than movie stars and models, who when seen in public stick out with their blinding, clearly artificial smiles. So, what techniques do these aesthetic dentists employ to achieve these outcomes?
Bonding
As a relatively popular and low-cost treatment, dental bonding is an aesthetic dental care procedure in which materials are bonded to a tooth's outer layer, the enamel or the sub-enamel dentin. This is done to repair issues such as discoloration, chips, and spaces in-between teeth or to lengthen teeth.
The procedure is incredibly simple and quick. After deciding what colour of resin best matches your teeth, a dentist will roughen the area on the surface of the tooth undergoing treatment, then the area is coated with a conditioning liquid before the resin itself is applied, moulded, hardened, then shaped.
Bleaching
Like bonding, bleaching—or tooth whitening—is also very popular. The currently most effective method of professional tooth bleaching uses active oxygen to decolourise the darker colours in teeth. Sadly, only your natural teeth can usually be whitened by this procedure; bonded enamel, veneers or laminates, and crowns or caps will generally remain the same colour as before.
Again, like bonding, bleaching is also simple and quick. Before the bleaching chemicals are applied to the teeth, an extensive check and perhaps a clean will be done and protective rubber is applied to the patient's gums for protection. The teeth are then dried and a bleaching solution is applied. Then the patient simply has to wait for a predetermined amount of time before the bleaching solution and rubber gum protection is removed.
Veneers
If your teeth previously haven't responded as well to whitening as you'd like, veneers may be for you. Also used for changing the shape of teeth, veneers are very thin customised laminates that are directly bonded to a dentist-roughened or reduced tooth using an adhesive. Though this may sound dangerously permanent, a good dentist will produce and temporarily attach a mock-up veneer to ensure that both they and the patient are happy with how the final product will look.
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