Ceramic Dental Veneers are the Gold Standard of Cosmetic Dentistry.
As I said in my previous article Porcelain Veneers: Better is impossible!
Ceramic veneers have a number of advantages:
· minimal dental wear,
· natural and highly aesthetic results,
· very well tolerated by the gums
· great longevity.
These factors are not all applicable to Composite Veneers, whether made in the laboratory, pre-formed or made directly in the patient’s mouth by the Dentist.
Composite veneers, when compared to ceramic veneers:
· they have a very inferior aesthetic
· have a much lower durability
· are subject to color changes, staining and leakage of the margins.
The only advantage they could have, compared to ceramic veneers, would be the cost, which is lower. This point would be of utmost importance if these two materials, ceramic and composite, were comparable, but they are not.
Being an eminently aesthetic treatment, it is only worth doing if the result is the best possible.
For these reasons, I almost never do composite veneers: even being cheaper, they always cost a substantial amount, they also involve some dental wear and for me it can be money wasted:
it’s better to do the treatment later or in stages and do it well than having an eminently aesthetic treatment that will never be as perfect.
To illustrate these statements I chose one of my last cases of Ceramic Veneers: “Ceramic Veneers Versus Composite Veneers”
This was a very young patient (22 years old) who, after using braces from 6 to 12 years old!! !, ended up with spaces(diastemas) between the teeth.
In an attempt to close these gaps, his former Dentist made 6 composite veneers from canine to canine. The results speak for themselves: the spaces were disguised, creating a rather unbalanced smile, with teeth that were too square and small for the person in question and, on top of that, these veneers changed color and had infiltrated margins over time.
The smile was not pretty and not at all in line with this young man’s age.
My opinion in this case is that it would have been better to do nothing and leave the spaces, rather than doing something that not only does not look good at the beginning, but deteriorates over time!
After analyses, we created an harmonious smile with:
1. Gingivoplasty: We raise the gum line a little to create teeth that are a little bigger and have a more harmonious shape.
2. Eight Ceramic Veneers: from premolar to premolar to close spaces and create a youthful and harmonious smile
3. Tooth whitening of the Lower Jaw.
This treatment only required 2 appointments (about 3 hours each) and, in 1 month, the patient had the smile he so desired.
For a patient who wore braces for 6 years and was left with a smile that didn’t look like his throughout his teens, it really is an extraordinary change!
It’s cases like this that make me continue to feel passionate about my work after more than 30 years!
