Creating single tooth replacements in the most natural way

My blog from last week was about creating natural replacement teeth in a case where we replaced 10 upper teeth. This week I discuss the same treatment to replace just a single individual tooth to show how this treatment is possible for either single or multiple missing teeth.

A lot of the work I do is mixed between replacing full sets of teeth and also replacing faw fewer teeth, or just a single tooth. In these single tooth cases, the biggest challenge is to mimic the patient’s own teeth adjacent to where I am replacing the tooth. It is often more tricky to match yo a natural tooth than it is to create a full set from scratch.

A replacement tooth placed in amongst natural teeth will need to mirror the gum line, tooth shape and tooth shades exactly to fit into the patient’s own smile. A lot of time and care is taken to achieve this. In this case we have replaced this tooth using a dental implant and, as you can see, the gum contours match very well with the tooth next to it. This ensures that the gum line matches too and why is this important? The gum line will determine the shape of the tooth as this forms 25% of the shape of the tooth. If this is not right then it is impossible to match the tooth perfectly.

25% of the shape of a replacement tooth is already determined before the crown of the replacement tooth is even made or fitted onto the dental implant.

The crown is made at the dental laboratory and is carefully shaped using both digital technology and skilled artistry to achieve a restoration that is the same shape and colours as the tooth next to it.

The attention to every little detail makes a single implant replacement tooth look like it has always been in our patient’s mouth. It truly is a team effort to achieve this and we are very proud to have a team that can provide this level of work all in-house.

Thank you for reading

Mohsin Patel BDS MJDF RCS (Eng)