-Porcelain veneers can last your lifetime.
You want to make sure that you have a dentist
who really understands cosmetic dentistry.
You need to discuss the shape, the color, the length,
the way that it's going to alter or change your profile
because these are permanent.
I'm Abby, and I'm getting veneers done today.
So, I was born without an adult tooth.
I have an implant on the right side
and bonding on the left side.
I'm probably most nervous
for just my teeth looking completely different,
but I think that's also why I'm so excited.
I think that veneers are tricky
because they can come out looking really fake.
Dr. Dorfman was the first person to tell me
that I should look into getting veneers,
and I trust his opinion more than anybody's.
So I thought that I should just go with whatever he said to do.
I'm Dr. Bill Dorfman,
a cosmetic dentist in Century City, California.
Abby is best friends with my daughter Georgie,
and she has always hated her teeth.
Probably the most challenging part of Abby's case
is the fact that she was born missing a tooth,
and so she had an implant placed.
She never, ever, ever liked that implant tooth.
It just didn't look natural.
We can alter and change anything...
-Okay. So am I gonna have temporary ones today?
-You're gonna walk out with little eggs instead of --
Of course, you're getting temporaries.
-[ Laughs ] I was like, "Wait. Are you joking?"
[ Laughter ] -I think I'm more nervous
for the first session just because
that's when I'm gonna see what my teeth would look like.
And I think that by the second session,
I'll be used to the new teeth and be able to fix anything
that I'm not perfectly happy with.
♪♪
-At the first visit,
what we're going to do is Zoom whitening.
I wanted to make her teeth as light as we could
so when we matched the new teeth to her existing teeth,
it's the brightest shade possible.
Number two, we do what's called a mockup.
The mockup is critical so the laboratory knows
exactly what shape we want Abby's teeth to be in.
So, Abby can give me some feedback.
She can tell me, "Doc, I want them longer
or shorter, whatever."
Once we get the mockup created, the laboratory will use that
as a template for the shape of her teeth.
♪♪
What we're going to do is now prepare her teeth.
Preparing her teeth means shaping the teeth.
We shape the three natural teeth for veneers.
♪♪
Her old implant tooth had to be removed.
♪♪
The big difference between
porcelain crowns and porcelain veneers
is when you do a crown, you really have to grind
a lot of the tooth away.
With veneers, sometimes we don't even
have to grind anything away.
And if we do, it's very, very minimal.
So you're not going to sacrifice the integrity of a tooth
with a good porcelain veneer.
When you place an implant, you need to torque it down
to 30 to 35 Newton-centimeters square.
That's the recommendation so that that implant
will stay there for the rest of Abby's life.
We took an impression with what's called
an impression coping so we could create a new implant tooth.
♪♪
So, after we finish that,
we go ahead and we fabricate beautiful temporaries
because we can't have Abby walking around
with ugly teeth for a week.
It was really fortunate that we created temporaries for Abby
because we were able to evaluate them,
and Abby then gave our laboratory
some specific instructions
on what she wanted a little bit differently.
And fortunately, Jane, my amazing lab technician,
pulled through, and they were perfect.
♪♪
Okay. Abbs. Tour temps look awesome.
Don't bite anything. Okay?
If you eat a sandwich, cut it and eat it in the back teeth.
You won't be able to floss, either, okay?
It's all connected.
Obviously, when we make your permanent teeth,
they'll all be individual teeth.
Your old implant is underneath the temporary,
so it shines through a little bit of gray.
Don't worry. When we do your new implant,
it's going to be porcelain-coated,
so it'll look just like a tooth.
You won't be able to tell it from your other ones.
Once we place the temporaries on,
you have to be very careful. You need to massage your gums.
You can't floss. It's all one piece.
Now, unlike the permanent teeth
where you'll be able to floss and everything else.
And also you can't bite
into anything at all with temporaries.
They will break.
♪♪
At the second visit,
we go ahead and we remove the temporaries.
♪♪
We remove the old implant abutment.
♪♪
And we place the new implant abutment.
♪♪
Now, you'll see that the new implant abutment
is tooth-colored, so there's no darkness.
She's never going to have any black or gray there.
Once we place that in,
we can then put the veneers on the adjacent teeth
and the crown on the implant tooth.
♪♪
Probably the trickiest part
of making porcelain veneers look natural
is not just the shape, but the color.
Fortunately, I have my own lab technician who sat chair-side
and literally painted Abby's teeth
with all the colors that a natural tooth has
to give it that beautiful natural appearance
and blend into her own dentition.
♪♪
Once Abby approves all four teeth,
we then go ahead and cement them on.
♪♪
Once you place the porcelain veneer on the tooth,
the permanent veneers and crowns are just like natural teeth.
You brush them. You floss them. You can eat whatever you want.
It takes as much force to break a porcelain veneer
as it does a natural tooth.
♪♪
-I was so excited to see my new teeth.
They were exactly what I was hoping they would look like.
I really like how the implant looks.
I think it looks so much more real,
and it fits in my mouth, unlike the original one.
-Working with Abby overall was a dream.
She is the perfect patient.
She's an interior decorator.
She has a very, very fine eye for detail.
And I think Abby was blown away.
-It's obviously a scary process
'cause it changes your whole smile,
but I'm so glad that I went through with him
and that I followed his suggestions.
And I'm just really happy with how my teeth look.
I know that whenever I smile in pictures now,
I'm gonna feel super confident about how my teeth look
and I'm not going to shy away
from smiling in pictures anymore.
-Hey, I'm Dr. Bill. Thank you for watching Refinery29.
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