Achieving a Cosmetic Smile in a predictable way – the Digital Smile Design

Posted on 18th June 2017

The Cosmetic Smile

Many patients attend our clinic asking for a ‘cosmetic smile‘. The word cosmetic in dentistry means a treatment intended to restore or improve a person’s appearance. Every patient I treat has a different interpretation of what a ‘cosmetic smile’ should look like on them. Some of our patients want perfect white teeth, whereas other patients want a few rotated or stained teeth to ‘blend’ in to the rest of their smile appearance. The fact is, this decision should be made by the patient however, sometimes it is difficult for them to visualise the different options available to them before the treatment is done.

Digital Smile Design

The digital smile design provides us and our patients with the unique opportunity to visualise their proposed treatment before they have had any treatment. This new technology has revolutionised our patient’s confidence in their treatment and also their expectation mapping.

All of the proposed changes to the teeth are made on the digital smile design software (on the computer), before any treatment is carried out. Both the dentist and the patient is then able to agree on the ideal design that the patient is happy with. The selected design is then used to manufacture the perfect bespoke smile using 3D printers and milling machines to ensure an exact copy is made to replicate the smile into the patient’s mouth.

The patient above was treated using our digital smile design protocol. The digital design ensures that all of the tooth proportions are in relation with the rest of the face. The final teeth were re-contoured using composite bonding to replicate the desired planned tooth shapes. Teeth whitening was also used to brighten the shade of her smile and the result was a beautiful safe cosmetic smile that the patient had control over form the design stage to the final result.

Our design protocol also enables us to copy the patient’s own teeth to ensure that any ‘newer’ teeth fit perfectly into their smile. If they do not want to change their overall look too much, we can make everything look slightly aged and stained as intended. The picture below shows 2 teeth which we made using our milling protocol. Try to see if you can work out which of these teeth are not ‘real’?

implant mohsin patel

I would like to thank Stephen Green for his work in developing the digital smile design protocol at his laboratory and at our clinic. We are very proud to be offering this revolutionary design protocol to all of our patients who want a cosmetic smile.

Please send me a message if you have any questions about this.

Thank you for reading

Mohsin Patel BDS MJDF RCS (Eng)

Talk to us

Please fill out the form below with your enquiry or you can call us on 0113 2633199. You can even pop in to the clinic.

"*" indicates required fields

Name*
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Related articles...

Book a Consultation

At Infinity Dental Clinic we see patients for routine dental check-ups with our dentists. Regular dental maintenance and good oral hygiene will ensure that you keep your teeth and gums healthy.

Book a Consultation