Mary first visited ArtLab Dentistry suffering from a whole host of problems. Mary had been avoiding eating certain foods in public, because her teeth had started breaking off. She had withdrawn from social interaction, and suffered from a loss of self-esteem and was embarrassed to smile and even avoided dating. Mary just needed to feel whole again.
To make matters worse and as a result of previous bad experiences, Mary had anxiety about seeing a new dentist, as so many people do. After a lot of research, she found ArtLab Dentistry and decided to make the 70 mile trip up the coast to meet with Dr. Reshad. One of the first things she said was “I want to get my life back.”
And so with the help of Dr. Reshad, a detailed diagnostic evaluation of her condition was performed. It was decided that the immediate problem that needed to be remedied was to get Mary to a place where she could start to enjoy her life, stabilize her infections and alleviate the pain and discomfort of chewing.
With the techniques used at ArtLab Dentistry, we were very quickly able to place Mary in extremely rigid and attractive provisional restorations. We used some of the teeth in her upper jaw, that were deemed hopeless but not useless. These teeth weren’t so great for the long-term use of final restorations, but we used these teeth to create provisionals for Mary’s upper jaw, and then placed new implants to make provisional teeth for her lower jaw.
The attractive provisional restorations we created for Mary immediately enabled her to chew and eat comfortably and start enjoying her life again.
Pre-op xray
Proposed treatment
Post-op xray
After implants had been placed, Mary was comfortable, able to eat and chew, and gaining confidence and enjoying life once again. Her new implants were healing and integrating. And now it was time to discuss the next important aspect of Mary’s treatment.
Mary had come to us with many problems to address but hadn’t realized another thing that was greatly affecting her smile. It was the fact that she had an extremely gummy smile. That means that whenever she smiled, more gum than actual teeth was showing in the upper jaw.
The digital mock-up design shown above gave a conservative approach to how much we could improve her gummy smile. The final result was even much better and less gummy than the digital plan.
With the techniques that have been developed by ArtLab Dentistry, we were able to design the implant position three-dimensionally. The implants were placed ideally, in a more apical, or higher up position so that her gummy smile disappears as part of the treatment. A deeper implant placement with precision can create a beautiful smile and eliminate or significantly reduce her gummy smile as well as fix all of her chief complaints. Essentially we were able to fix her aesthetics, form, and function by precisely planning her treatment.
The provisional phase is always a critical phase to evaluate the desired outcomes of treatment and decide what is ideal in terms of aesthetics for a particular patient. It is really a team effort between the doctor and the patient, and sometimes a family member as well.
In Mary’s case, we were able to do just that and included her daughter who is in the entertainment industry. She was able to join us for some of the planning visits to help design and give her Mom the beautiful smile that she deserved. It is very much a team effort and takes some time and is not something that can be done overnight, but we always get acceptable and aesthetic results. We can really make a life-changing difference for our patients.
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