Small improvements for long lasting results

The previous two blog articles were about 2 patient cases that required an extensive amount of dental treatment to restore those patient’s smiles. In this blog I will present 2 cases I have recently treated which demonstrate what a small amount of dental treatment can do to the overall health and stability of the dentition.

In many cases I am presented with a mouth that has a ‘few’ teeth requiring treatment but the rest of the teeth are still of good health. Dental negelct at this stage would almost certainly result in many more teeth becoming compromised in the long term. By treating the localised ‘few’ teeth at this early stage we will reduce the risk of future dental problems developing, thereby resulting in a preventative aswell as a restorative solution for the patient.

In the first case here we can see that the patient has:

1 – An exposed crown margin on the UL2, which is at an increased risk of dental decay.

2 – Extrinsic staining and plaque build up increasing the risk of gum disease and dental decay.

3 – A missing Upper Right 4 premolar tooth which is a cosmetic concern as well as providing instability of the adjacent teeth.

By addressing the 3 problems above with a replacement tooth (dental implant), hygiene therapy and a replacement ceramic crown, we have lowered the risk of future dental problems developing in the patient. The appearance of the smile has signifciantly improved and the teeth are in stable health.

In this second case we can see that the patient has:

1 – A missing Upper Left 4 premolar tooth which is a cosmetic concern as well as providing instability of the adjacent teeth.

2 – Dental decay is evident on many of the front teeth, at this stage they are all still treatable with replacement composite restorations.

3 – Some of the lower incisor teeth appear very dark. This is due to intrinsic staining because the teeth have had root canal treatment previously.

The above problems were treated with a dental implant to permanently replace the missing tooth. The dental decay was treated with composite restorations. For the stained lower teeth we performed internal whitening which is a treatment process applied to teeth that have had root canal treatment previously and have then discoloured following root canal treatment. This is usually seen on incisor teeth at the front of the mouth and as you can see, following treatment at our clinic, the discolouration has been completely eliminated.

The 2 examples above demonstrate what can be achieved when dental treatment is performed on patient’s with localised dental problems. In both cases the situation would have been a lot worse had we delayed the treatment. Neither of these patients lost any more teeth following treatment and the true success of this treatment is that we managed to save every tooth in a way that restored them all back to their optimum health and appearance.

If you’d like to discuss anything with our team, email us at [email protected]

Thank you for reading,

Mohsin Patel BDS MJDF RCS (Eng)