Minneapolis Area Dental Services: Case Studies

Glenda

Recently remarried, Glenda decided it was time to look her best. Replacing her old, opaque looking metal-based porcelain crowns and placing all-porcelain veneers gave her the look she had always wanted.

Cathy

Cathy is a successful small business owner who was never satisfied with the look of her smile. She came to our office having received other opinions of having all her upper teeth removed and a denture placed. We decided this was not a great option for a healthy woman in her mid-fifties.

Her new smile consisted of getting her gums healthy, replacing missing teeth with dental implants, and replacing her old dental work with new, pretty, all-porcelain restorations.. Fun woman who now loves to smile!

Dixie

Broken teeth. Discolored teeth. Old, worn dental work. Unsightly spaces. Put them all together and you have a situation where a patient may be very unhappy with their smile.

Proper planning of the end result gave Dixie a new smile that will allow her to enjoy her upcoming retirement.

Mary Lee

“Instant Orthodontics” is a phrase that is often used to describe the treatment provided to straighten teeth or close spaces through the use of various cosmetic restorative procedures. Many busy adult patients in their forties, fifties, or sixties want straight, white teeth, but don’t want 24-36 months of braces.

Mary Lee was just this type of patient. Our solution was to straighten her teeth restoratively, not orthodontically and her treatment time was weeks, not years.

Beth

People grinding their teeth at night can lead to a variety of problems. Some of the many symptoms include headaches, neck aches, muscle pain, pain and clicking in the joint, and severe wear of the teeth. Shortening of the teeth can reduce the muscle support of the face and lead to a premature aging look. We attempt an approach to restore the proper length of the teeth to re-create a healthy relationship and dramatically improve the cosmetics.

Wouldn’t you think that this full mouth restoring of Beth’s teeth has changed her life?

Joy

A common scenario for a patient is that he or she may have had many large fillings placed on their front teeth to take care of decay that was present. A few years later larger fillings are placed because of recurring decay. Often times the fillings become so large that a stronger crown must be placed. The problem is that all too often there is not a discussion of how the whole smile looks and the patient is only told to repair the one tooth. Now the patient is stuck with the color of that tooth and subsequent treatment is always that same undesirable color. Eventually this “patch-up” type of dentistry creates a very undesirable smile.

When Joy got to this point she asked what we could do and I told her, “We need to work on however many teeth it takes to make your smile look good. Sometimes that’s one tooth; sometimes it’s twenty-eight. Smile for me and it should be pretty easy to see.” Joy’s new smile required working on 12 upper teeth and no treatment to her bottom teeth.

Rick

Over a period of time it is common for teeth to darken. Crowns that may have matched the color of adjacent teeth no longer look good. Bleaching does not always lighten teeth to a desired color and sometimes a more dramatic approach needs to be done to achieve the desired result.

You can see the wonderful result as you view the transition from before treatment, to the transitional temporaries, to the final definitive treatment. Jim now enjoys a good cabernet without fear of his teeth staining.

Rick

Rick is a very successful builder of stores for a major national retailer. He told us his reason he did not like his smile was because of several mismatched crowns and his lower teeth were very crooked.

Treatment consisted of creating a before-treatment wax up of what his teeth could look like. When we agreed this would be a wonderful result, we used this wax up as a template to prepare the temporary smile he would wear for the days while his permanent smile was being made in the laboratory. When he returned, we transformed his smile with all-porcelain Empress crowns and facings. He now has the confidence to smile at every occasion

Tom

From the mid-eighties until today, many attempts to use composite resin (plastics) for cosmetic changes have been tried. In many cases these resins are a very effective way of changing a person’s smile, but often times the long term results are not as durable as porcelain.

Tom was a patient who had composite facings placed many years ago and, predictably, they chipped and discolored over the years. When he retired from a successful career in finances, he decided to make his transition to Florida with a new smile. Our treatment consisted of bleaching his lower teeth and replacing his worn composites with Empress porcelain facings.