In case of dental crown lengthening, a cavity may appear below the gum tissue and is often only revealed with x-rays. It is not possible to restore this cavity since the gums prevent access.
Dental Crown Lengthening Procedure
A solution for this problem starts with the raising of a flap. Different instruments including the dentist’s drill are used to reduce the bone height, and this new bone architecture is prepared to support the gums in a lower position on the root of the tooth. The new bone topography must follow all the previous peaks and valleys. The gums are then repositioned on the prepared bone which now supports the gums below the cavity. The cavity can now be accessed in this situation, a resin filling is used to restore the cavity. The cavity is accessible and removed followed by the resin placement. The reason the procedure is called dental crown lengthening is that the crown tends to look long after the procedure.
In this situation we see an entire cusp break off the tooth. If the tooth breaks below the gums we cannot restore it as in this case to save the tooth we can do several procedures. First, we raise a gingival flap for access, and then we reduce the bone level so that the bone is a certain minimum distance below the fracture. Different instruments including the dentist’s drill, are used to reduce the bone height, and this new bone architecture is prepared to support the gums in a lower position on the root of the tooth. The flap is repositioned and sutured into place. After healing the tooth can now be restored. In this situation, light-cured resin filling is used first to replace the lost cusps. this may be adequate in some situations, but the best way to restore a tooth with a large fracture is with a crown. The tooth is prepared, and the crown is cemented on top. Initially, there may be gum spaces missing between the teeth but if the distance between the bone and the contact point is less than 5 millimetres the tissue will eventually fill in these areas.
What is a Crown Lengthening Procedure?
Many times when a tooth has a root canal, and or has a trauma a piece of the tooth will break, or the tooth will have a decayed that will be placed under the gums close to the bone margins making it very difficult for a dentist to have a good preparation and get a good impression assuring that the crown will sit well and seal the tooth properly and therefore maintaining good health and longevity of the restoration.
A dental crown lengthening procedure, a functional crown lengthening procedure is the surgical technique that we use using specific tools and techniques that we have that will allow us to remove just a minimum amount of tissues hard and soft around the target tooth, and allowed to expose the piece that was broken or decayed that used to be under the gum above the gums. Allowing the gums to mature and heal like that for approximately four weeks and therefore after that have your practitioner or you dentist be able to prep the tooth hit a good impression and get a good seal of the tooth maintaining the longevity and the health of that tooth.
Gummy Smile Correction
We get a lot of patients who have a gummy smile. When they smile too much gum tissue shows, and they’re a little self-conscious about it. There are two procedures that we use for correcting that. Sometimes we use both. The first one is called dental crown lengthening where we reshape the gum if the teeth are short so that the teeth look longer, and often that will take care of the gummy smile. The other procedure that we use and is when the teeth are long enough. We don’t want to make them any longer.
Make Them Longer?
We do what’s called a lip lowering procedure in the lip lowering procedure it’s a minor plastic surgical procedure where we attach the inside of the lip lower down on the gum so that when the patient smiles the gum doesn’t pull way back and give that gummy smile look. In thin lip one of the things that tends to happen with the lip lowering is the upper lip gets fuller when we do that so we remove some of the outer tissue from underneath the lip suture it above the teeth so that the lip is fuller and when the patient smiles less of the gum tissue shows it just doesn’t pull up as high – great procedures each one for different cases. Sometimes the teeth are very short, and there’s a lot of gum tissue even if we long gate the teeth we may do both procedures but that’s very unusual all of this tissue is removed, and then we anchor that to that we pulled.
Crown Lengthening
Some of you may have heard that you need to have crown lengthening around your teeth. Some of you may be aware that you have a gummy smile or when you smile only half your tooth shows. We do a procedure called crown lengthening. We’re able to make those teeth look longer for a more esthetic smile. Sometimes we use a laser to assist us with this procedure. Other times a patient may have a defective filling or crown or the decay goes to the bone. The patient may then ask us to perform a crown lengthening procedure which makes it to Thal a little bit longer at the gum line so that the dentist can place a proper fitting restoration on your tooth.
