Improving tooth alignment and appearance with replacement teeth – Dental Implants

None of our patients have ever looked forward to having their teeth removed. In fact, I don’t think anyone would naturally look forward to having dental extractions. What does one do without their teeth? Whether it’s one tooth or multiple teeth, the fact is most people would be anxious at the prospect of having those teeth missing in their mouth.

Teeth are only ever removed due to disease or due to a problem that cannot be treated. In most cases this means that the patient is going to be losing a sub-standard tooth. When we plan treatment to replace missing teeth we always consider the ways in which we can improve the overall dental health and appearance with the replacement tooth.

An example of this can be seen by a case that I recently completed at our clinic. The patient presented to our clinic with 2 upper central incisors that had been treated with post crowns. He had a sporting injury when he was 14 years old and this resulted in him fracturing his upper central incisors. The teeth were repaired with post crowns however, at the age of 32, he attended our clinic with the teeth suffering with dental abscesses. After 18 years, the crowns had failed and for this reason we needed to consider replacing these teeth.

We noticed that the existing teeth had a large overjet in which the upper central incisors were positioned way out in front of the lower teeth. The patient had confirmed that he would prefer not to have the overjet. The overjet was most likely the result of those teeth being traumatised at a young age.

We planned to replace our patient’s central incisors with dental implants. During our CBCT and digital planning we carefully planned to position the dental implants in a more upright position when compared with his own failing incisors. This enabled our team to correct the patient’s overjet as well as replacing his failing teeth with the most aesthetic form of tooth replacement. Simply replacing teeth in their existing positions would not have addressed all of our patients problems however, by providing a bespoke plan we were able to correct 2 separate dental problems within one dental procedure.

As can be seen by the patient’s clinical photographs, the results show that the new teeth match the appearance of the patient’s own teeth perfectly. By eliminating the overjet, the patient is now less likely to have trauma to the front teeth and he has an improved smile appearance.

Thank you for reading

Mohsin Patel BDS MJDF RCS (Eng)