One tooth is not straight?
You might think about traditional metal braces or Invisalign when you have one crooked tooth. These are orthodontic treatments, which means dentists try to move your crooked tooth, which is an excellent idea if you have nice-looking teeth.
As an adult, you might already have cavities, wear, or discolored teeth. You might have unpleasant-shaped teeth. Moving your existing tooth or teeth does not help through orthodontics treatment if that is the case.
Or, after years of ortho treatment, you will have straight, nicely aligned, and unpleasant-shaped teeth. Even After ortho treatment, you might want to have a veneer to fix the shape because ortho treatment won’t change your teeth’ shapes and colors.
If you can skip the ortho treatment, would that be great? If your teeth alignment is good, you will save time and money by taking a six-month smile or fast straight teeth treatment. With careful planning, cosmetic technique, and case selection, you can forget the time-consuming ortho phase of the treatment to achieve a nice straight, good-looking tooth.
How do we proceed with tooth straightening?
Step 1: Treatment Initiation
Treatment Initiation First, cosmetic dentists need to check the gum health and occlusion and check the gum line to see if they are even or within normal range. Also, ensuring the tooth movement or changing the angle we want is a little. Suppose we need to move the tooth position or the tilt. In that case, we need an aggressive prep of your tooth, which might cause unnecessary root canal treatment, or the result is unnatural.
To plan those, cosmetic dentists need to do a mock-up/wax-up on your teeth to see if it is doable without root canal treatment. This process is essential and treats your copied tooth to see the result without grinding your teeth to go back to plan B if necessary.
Step 2: Test drive
Once the treatment plan has been decided, we copy the mock-up on your tooth without prepping your tooth or minimum prep so that you can test drive your new tooth that is straight. You can check for a couple of days or weeks. If you see some problems, you can return to our office and re-adjust the mock-up without anesthesia.
Step 3: Seating/Placement
We can finally proceed with the treatment when you are satisfied with the result. We can prep your tooth and take the impressions (molds). Then, we send it to the dental lab to fabricate a crown or a veneer. We take photos and the dental impression of the final mock-up so that the lab technician knows what shape you like. Finally, we send the tooth color information with the color-corrected cameras and color mapping drawings along with that information.
Step 4: Check and Adjustment
We will get a custom-made crown or veneer in a few weeks. If the color and shape look good, we put them in your mouth. You’ll have to return for a bite or minor shape adjustments after a few weeks. This way, you can skip orthodontics and have straight teeth sooner than traditional braces.
The advantage of straightening teeth without braces is saving time and money. Since we do not move our teeth using apparatus, the most crucial point is that you do not have to worry about relapse. And you don’t have to wear a retainer to prevent relapse (tooth position will move back to original after braces if you do not wear a retainer). So it’s a massive benefit to you.