My enamel is thinning can I still have teeth whitening

Q. The enamel on my two front teeth is thinning and consequently these teeth are beginning to look translucent. Would you still recommend a whitening procedure? If so which one? With thanks

A. Dear J,

Firstly sorry for the delay in replying but I have been away from the UK for a couple of weeks.

Bleaching whitens both enamel (the outer covering of the teeth) and dentine ( the majority of the remaining part of the tooth). Enamel is more easily bleached and as such if a tooth has little of it remaining the final result will be compromised. The other concern is sensitivity as the dentine is where the pain from hot and cold originates. If the tooth has only a small amount of the protective enamel layer the teeth may be very sensitive during bleaching and for some time afterwards.

Having said all that you mention that the teeth are beginning to look translucent. If you were getting only enamel loss then the teeth actually would become less translucent as the remaining dentine is more opaque than enamel. What may be happening is wear on the tips of your teeth from the inside ( palate side ) of your teeth, leaving a thinned enamel edge. If this is the case you may be suffering from some type of acid attack ( commonly from fizzy drinks or acid from the stomach), or / and a bite problem causing excessive wear of your teeth.
The remaining enamel can be bleached but you may get some sensitivity problems. Want you ideally need to do is to get the cause of this translucent enamel properly diagnosed before you commence with any bleaching.

Hope this helps,

Kindest regards

Dr Julian Caplan BDS
Aviva Cosmetic Dentistry
Director on the board of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry

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Tags: teeth whitening

This post was published on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 7:23 pmand is filed under Dr Caplan's Answers, Experts Answers, Q. Teeth Whitening. 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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