Dr. Katie To shows two cases of chipped and worn front teeth. Normal wear should be about 1 mm per 100 years, but these patients lost much more. She rebuilt the teeth with bonded restorations and explained why catching wear early matters.
These two cases, they have a little bit of chipping and wear. So even though it's more subtle, it makes a huge difference with the symmetry and the balance. Because if you take a look at this, you see on the left side, the patient wasn't happy with some of that wear and the chipping on that front area. And then that darker area is an old filling that he had. And he wanted to make sure that he wanted a more even natural look. And so we did that. We did the design, we did the bonding, and in this case, he didn't have to do very many teeth. And you can see it blends in. It looks really natural, has that shine and luster like porcelain would have. And then the picture on the right side. Now, I know also a lot of patients even like the look of that, and that's okay. This patient in particular noticed that his two front teeth used to be longer, and then they were starting to wear down. He noticed every year they were getting shorter and shorter, and so he came to us to make sure that he can rebuild back what he's lost and then protect it from getting worse. So that's really key with early prevention, because when we do the screening, we're seeing, hey, the teeth are wearing down, and really Usually when teeth are wearing down just from normal eating and chewing, it should be maybe a millimeter for every 100 years. And some people come to us and they're like 100 years, 200 years worn down, and they're definitely not that old. We want to make sure that we stop it in its tracks. In this case, we rebuild back what he lost.
