Don’t kill healthy teeth for beautiful crowns

Through the evolution, the pursuit of beauty has always accompanied us and has evolved. From the ancient Greek ideal of the human body, right up to today’s Hollywood model.

However these standards have changed over the centuries, one of them, remained unchanged – beautiful is the healthy person.

In the past 15 years the Hollywood ideal has settled permanently in a big part of the world. In recent times our dreams became a little more achievable thanks to the plastic surgery and aesthetic stomatology. Anyone can get an “upgrade”, regardless of genes inherited from his mom and dad. Especially in smile. The “Hollywood smile” became very popular along with the TV shows and movies.

Such striving for a “complete makeover” can be seen in dental cabinets every day – many people enter with a wish to smile broadly, without hiding and being ashamed of their smile.

The obsession with beauty has even reached the point where the ideal of a beautiful smile began to be associated only with the equal and ordered, as a white fence metal-ceramic and porcelain crowns.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be beautiful, but in our efforts, striving for beauty we forget something very significant. Namely our health.

We forget, that even the best-made artificial crowns can not even at 10% reach the true piece, made by nature (or God) – the natural teeth.

In seeking to get their so desired beautiful white smile, people are even ready to part with their absolutely healthy teeth and to replace them with implants with perfectly aligned white “teeth”.

But hardly anybody has thought about what will happen after 10 or 20 years. And how it will affect their health. Yes, overall health, which is partiality associated with the teeth and mouth.

In most studies the authors cite periods of 10-15 years, median survival of crowns and bridges made of metal ceramic and porcelain. Not because the material deteriorates over time (there is no way, having in fact, that in China have been discovered porcelain and ceramic figures of 2000 and more years, the dental porcelain is not very different in nature from that of plates for example). Actually the replacement is necessary due to the aging of the body, which is leading to continuous changes. Namely these changes require over a certain period crowns and bridges to be replaced.

And this, of course, leads to a new mandatory “investment” in the beautiful smile.

But the question is whether anyway we can be beautiful and healthy? Of course. The modern aesthetic dentistry provides opportunities for perfectly arranged and shaped teeth without harming your health.

The most biological and non-infringement for our health method of treatment is positioning these teeth with braces. Before 20-25 years, the arrangement of the teeth with braces was a privilege of minors – children from 9 to 14 years. With the development of brackets it became also possible the teeth of elderly patients, even by people over the age of 60 to be arranged.

An advantage of this method of aesthetic treatment is that the arrangement of the teeth occurs via their relocation, without having to grind the healthy dental tissue.

So, for a period of 1.5-2 years by slow and gradual relocation the teeth are being rearranged in the correct position. The important thing in this treatment, that everyone who would like to undergo this procedure needs to know, is that after the completion of the teeth repositioning, it is necessary to be placed a removable or non-removable splint (so called retainer), which shall serve to keep the teeth in the same position. If such a splint has not been put, the teeth return to their old places literally a for a few days. The wearing of the retainer usually takes extra 1-2 years.

Of course, the method has its drawbacks – the process of alignment of the teeth is slow, and most patients want to be beautiful immediately. The braces are not comfortable in the beginning, until you get used to them, it is difficult to maintain hygiene. But anyone who has worn braces will tell you that it is easy to get used to them.

For milder problems with teeth alignment – a little cluster, distances between the teeth up to 2 mm, broken, stained or pathologically worn teeth, adjustment is possible by bonding, also called direct restoration or art restoration.

With this method, by means of a minimum (correcting) grinding and further superimposition of a photopolymer material is possible to achieve an aesthetic correction in the alignment, shape, and sometimes also in the color of the teeth. This method is quick – after the necessary examination, analysis and preparation of a treatment plan, the correction can be performed in one visit to the dental cabinet. The median survival time of a such restoration is 8-10 years, and it is necessary one time annually the photopolymer to be polished – this is the disadvantage of this method. With this method it is advisable to whiten your teeth (mainly  in cases where only a part of the tooth has been recovered), because our biological teeth darken with time, and the photopolymer – not. With this option you can easily and quickly get beautiful smile, without damaging serious your “dental health”.

The third method, I would like to point out is the aesthetic correction with porcelain veneers. Their application is similar to the restoration (bonding), the difference is that it is necessary to grind 0.3-0.5 mm of the thickness of the enamel over the entire outer surface, and withdrawal of the cutting edge about 1-1.5 mm (depending on the case). With this method the well aligned teeth are present after 2-4 weeks. Thanks to the fact that the entire outer surface of the tooth has been covered, there is also possible correction of stained teeth ( so called discolorations). According to most authors the survival of veneers (limited in the enamel) is 17-25 years.  Sometimes, in the name of aesthetics it is necessary the different methods to be combined (bonding after braces, veneers after braces or bonding and veneers) for achievement of the ultimate goal – the so desired brilliant smile.