Dental Plastic Surgery

Federal regulators kicked off a two day hearing on silicone breast implants today. It was taken off the market for several years because of health concerns. And medical experts say they are still tracking the long term risk. Here NBC4's Jennifer Bjorklin reports.

What's the shelf life on breast implants? Five years and then usually they get them revamped.

I don't think I've ever thought about that before.

I would say, I guess maybe like, I would say like 10 years and that's a good guess.

But I think a good rule of thumb is 10 years doesn't mean they automatically need to be replaced at that time. But realize that you might need to make some changes or get reevaluated or possibly have them replaced at about 10 years.

Breast surgeon Dr. Deanna Attai says she thinks the FDA is revisiting long term performance for silicone breast implants for good reason.

And I also think that what the FDA is trying to do is come up with what's a reasonable way to follow these women long term to evaluate for any problems and to catch problems early.

Silicone implants have been back on the market for five years after a 14 year long ban. FDA recently announced that women who have breast implants. An FDA video cautions the implants may be linked to a higher risk of a rare form of lymphoma. Although the risk is small, the FDA panel is meeting today and tomorrow to consider ways to improve safety studies and better assess the overall performance of implants in real world use. What we do know for people getting silicone implants for breast augmentation, one in five will need them removed in 10 years. The risk goes up for women getting them for breast reconstruction, one in two will need removal in 10 years.

Nobody expects that these are going to last forever. Your body changes and these might change with your body and there is a failure rate. Sometimes there are ruptures or there are leaks that develop. So it's important to realize that just because you have them put in doesn't mean they're good for life.

Well, as long as we're talking about cosmetic surgery here, are you ever too old? Probably not, according to some people. Here are some facts for you. According to the American Society of plastic surgeons, about 84,000 people over the age of 65, 84,000 now had plastic surgery last year. That's a 21% increase over the year before. The most popular thing, facelifts. But have you ever heard of something called the dental facelift? Good teeth can actually make your face look Younger. Here are some before and after pictures of patients from local dentist David Frey. He says as we get older, our jaws move, which can actually change our appearance.

As we get older, we use our teeth. And as we use our teeth, our teeth wear down, and they don't stay in the same position as they were when you were 15, 18, 20 years old. So you actually lose the vertical dimension of the jaw as you get older. And so what we can do by relaxing the muscles of the jaw, we can actually find the position that you were in, say, when you were 20, and we can put your jawline back into that position and restore your teeth in that position.

All right. Dr. Frey says there are hundreds, if not thousands of dentists doing this procedure around the country. And joining us right now is Sonda Moldovan. She is an LA Periodontist, and she's here to tell us about that. I looked at that, and same thing. I thought that looked like some sort of torture procedure. But let's talk about teeth and how they can make you look younger.

Yeah. You know, Colleen, as soon as 20 or sometimes in their 50s, patient starts losing molars. So what happens is they don't lose their muscles too. Eat with. So we see drooping of the face, and it's very obvious sagging, especially if the patients are missing teeth on just one side of the face. So when they look in the mirror, they could really see the one side drooping.

So what's the procedure for this? Implants or something like that?

Dental implants are really the best way we have to replace the missing teeth, because dentures don't replace the function that a normal tooth would do towards a.

Muscle and bridge work or small pieces like that. Those aren't the same either.

They're not the same either.

Okay, what is this apparatus here? Do you know? Have you ever seen anything like this?

Yeah, actually, this is used in neuromuscular dentistry to reposition the muscles of the face in an optimal environment so there's no strain and there's no tightness on one side versus the other.

So you go into a doctor and he repositions your jaw. And how do you keep it there? I mean, you have to break the jaw to. To redo it or what happens?

So what happens is the dentist will actually build the teeth or build porcelain jackets on top of the teeth to keep the bite in that position.

And it doesn't affect your speech pattern or anything like that.

It doesn't?

No.

And automatically, within a few months, patients notice the tightness of the face and the Muscles changing.

Is there an age limit? I mean, when do you start seeing this sort of thing? And how late in life could you do something like this?

We start doing these procedures as early as in their 30s. But my oldest patients with implants was 86 years old.

You talk about that strengthening the muscles in your jaw. Could you just do exercises for something like that?

You can do exercises, true. But if you don't have any chewing surface there from teeth, we can't use those muscles.

Okay, now we're talking about the cosmetic surgery where you actually, you know, go in and do something like that. What other things can you do to sort of freshen up your appearance in terms of your teeth?

So definitely keeping them clean, that's very important. And if somebody's grinding to keep a night guard to prevent that occlusal surface from wearing down so that your face doesn't collapse, that's very important.

What about. What are they called now, Veneers and things like that. I know a lot of people talk about getting those, especially in this town. Everybody has such a spectacular smile. Their teeth are a beautiful color. Veneers, how far have those come?

So we've come a long way with porcelain material in general. So we can make thinner veneers that are more conservative today that look beautiful and have great function.

One of the criticisms I'd heard about those over the years is that they look like those little Chiclets, you know, the little chewing gum things.

True. Not anymore. I mean, we have such great porcelains. And the dental technicians that do make the veneers, they're artists, and they could really look natural.

Is this sort of thing covered by insurance? Any of these procedures we're talking about.

Dental implants are starting to be covered by insurance. Veneers are not because it's strictly cosmetic. But even the dental insurance companies see the benefit from having dental implants. So they're starting to cover them.

And what can you expect, like a fresh, bright smile and all this to take off your face in terms of age, in terms of years?

So I've had patients that haven't had back teeth for 10, 20 years. And they said, oh, my God, Everybody's telling me that I look 15 years younger. So about 10 to 15 years, I would say.

All right. Well, thank you for coming in and explaining that. Appreciate it.

You're welcome.

All right.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.