I have mild over crowding and want to straighten one tooth

Q. Hi, I have mildly overcrowded teeth on my upper and lower jaw. One of my lateral incisors (the tooth next my right front tooth) has become crooked and partly pushed behind my right central incisor (front tooth). In photos this gives the appearance that I have a gap in my teeth and is making me feel self conscious about my smile. I don\’t want braces and just want to straighten this one tooth out - or improve it’s appearance in some way. I’m totally happy with the rest of my teeth. Could veneers help me or is the only way to go braces? Do you have any idea how much treating this one tooth might cost? Thanks for your time!

A. Hi E,

Thank you for your question,

Without looking at the your teeth it is difficult to tell you for sure that a veneer could improve the way things would look. Braces are always the best and least destructive way of correcting crowding. Other alignment problems can also be corrected in your mouth ensuring that your smile is healthy and aesthetically pleasing but the treatment can take between 18 months to 2 years. If you are reluctant to go down this path then the other option is to place a veneer. This may not look quite right however because there is a reduced space between your central incisor and canine. This means that the resulting restoration will be narrower than the one on the other side and therefore they will be symmetry problems. This may be a compromise that you are willing to accept if you don’t want to have orthodontic treatment. The other consideration to make is that if a veneer is placed on the tooth without having any tooth preparation then you will end up with a tooth that is thicker than your other and still may not be in proper alignment. If the tooth is shaved down slightly so that the tooth is not thicker and is in proper alignment you will be compromising the health of the tooth. The lateral incisor is the smallest tooth in the mouth and therefore even if a conservative prepartion is done, as a percentage of the tooth, it may be substantial.

I think the best way to decide is to have your dentist place a composite veneer on the tooth. This is a white filling material and can be placed without damaging the tooth. It will be like a mock veneer. You could live with it for a while and see if you are happy with the result. It is completely reversible so you won’t have compromised anything, only a little time.

If it were my tooth I would probably have braces but everyone is different and so I think the composite veneer is a good way to go so that you can go into any treatment braced with more knowledge. (pun not intended)!

regarding cost. This can vary greatly depending on the experience and training of the dentist and the laboratory used to fabricate the veneer. Veneers can range between £450 and £1200 at the top range. Make sure that you ask the dentist what kind of experience he/she has and ask them to show you examples of their work. If they are doing this kind of work regularly they will definitely have a portfolio. This a part of your body and you have to have someone that you trust and knows what they are doing. To Give you an idea I would first place the composite veneer and see how you liked the look of it. If you decided to go ahead with treatment I would have the lab that was going to make the veneer see you to make sure that the shade is matched exactly to the teeth on either side of the gap. Once the preparation is done a temporary veneer would be placed until your final one is ready.

I hope this helps.
Kind Regards
Dr Komal Suri

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This post was published on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 12:00 amand is filed under Dr Suri's Answers, Experts Answers, Q. Dental Finance, Q. Dental Veneers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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