Smile Makeover

A smile makeover is when a patient really wants to transform their smile, whether they have dark teeth, crooked teeth, short teeth, teeth with cavities, crowns, old crowns, whatever, but they want to look better. They want to have smile they can be proud of, and not be embarrassed of smiling. So a smile makeover is the teeth that you see when you smile. Sometimes it's the upper teeth, lower teeth, or both. The process for a smile makeover can be from something simple to more involved. Some people have a gummy smile. We do gingival recontouring, or raise their gum a little bit, so they don't have such a gummy smile. Some persons have a large space in between their teeth. We close the spaces. Some people have crooked teeth, but they don't want orthodontics, so we do what we call two visit-orthodontics, which would involve porcelain veneers or crowns. With the technology that we have today, we can make the teeth look really lifelike. A nice bright smile that looks good, lasts a life time, and feels good. Porcelain veneers are a thin, laminate of porcelain over the natural teeth. There is minimal, or sometimes no filing of the teeth to do porcelain of the teeth, but we can transform a smile into a beautiful bright smile in two visits. The first visit involves preparing the teeth and taking impressions. Then we make provisional and temporary restorations, and I make really nice temporaries. The patient walks out of here looking better than they did coming in. They don't have to be embarrassed about their temporaries. On the second visit, they come back, we remove the temporaries and bond in the porcelain veneers. We can transform a smile in two visits from one that you would be embarrassed about to one that you could be proud, smiling, and be a charmer with. Veneers can impact a patient's life dramatically. For example, I had a patient a couple of weeks ago. Her daughter is getting married next week. She's been embarrassed about her smile her whole life. She asked me if I could do something for her, and I said, "Sure". So, we did porcelain veneers on ten of her upper teeth. She has always been embarrassed to smile. She came back yesterday from photos, and she said, "I love my smile. I can't believe. I am so happy to smile. It looks great. Thank you, Dr. Mortensen." You know, when I can do that for somebody, that's just so rewarding.