Things You Need to Know About Aesthetic Dentistry
(Part 2)
We now continue with our discussion on aesthetic dentistry that we started in this column last week.
The main focus of aesthetic dentistry is on improving the color, shape, size, position, and alignment of the teeth as well as the overall appearance of one’s smile. A nicer smile means that it affords the person healthy gums, which can be surgically altered to make a smile appear with less gums and to improve the jaw structure.
There are people who visit the dentist to fix their smile to get better function from their teeth rather than opt for some dental work for the sole reason of nicer appearance.
Aesthetic dentists are more known as cosmetic dentists and their training, specialty, and education are focused on the type of dentistry which aims to make the smile look nicer. As such, aesthetic dentists can help bring a better and whiter glow to the teeth even if there are some over-the-counter teeth whitening products that anyone can use on their own teeth and skip the need to get professional help to whiten the teeth.
This field of dentistry has its own share of controversies in as far as ethics in practice as the specializations’ predominant objective is to market aesthetic dentists like the plastic surgeons of dentistry. We need to know that the American Dental Association (ADA) doesn’t recognize aesthetic dentistry as a formal specialty.
The type of aesthetic dentistry will depend on the work needed to be performed on one’s teeth, jaw, gums among others, which can extend to orthodontics or having braces and prosthodontics, which refers to the installation of dentures.
An aesthetic dentist may be able to help you get a prettier smile just like what the celebrities have. A patient like you can ask the aesthetic dentist to perform gum grafts, place crowns or install caps, place some porcelain veneers or laminates, and bonding treatments to your teeth and gums.
There are times that a set of teeth is considered to be “gummy” or simply having too much gums. The aesthetic dentist may help a person with a gummy smile by performing a procedure so that more teeth are seen thereby reducing the sight of gums.
At the same time, the dentist can also help a person who has a big tooth to make it appear smaller and more appealing to the eyes.
An aesthetic dentist may perform what is called as gum removal or gingivectomy that can help people with large gums and make the teeth look bigger.
In some dental clinics, they do teeth sculpting and reshaping as well as bonding of the teeth in one visit.
Other dental aesthetic techniques available to patients are gum depigmentation to get one’s gum color right, laser whitening or bleaching of your teeth’s enamel, among others.
The aesthetic dentist may help you solve the problem of overbite, underbite, or horse-like teeth especially if you want all these to be improved. It is also possible to have teeth straightened properly through techniques like putting on braces or retainers, which is also known as orthodontic dentistry .
Of course, these treatments will result in the improvement of your appearance due to how your jaw or chin and cheeks will dramatically change.