Feeling confident about your teeth can mean the difference between facing your days with a smile and, well, not. Abby Haas was willing to try whatever it took to finally get the smile she'd dreamed of, which brought her to cosmetic dentist Bill Dorfman, DDS. In this episode of Macro Beauty, we get a closer look at how Dr. Dorfman transformed Haas' teeth — and her life.
Haas, who was born without an adult tooth, didn't like the unnatural appearance of the implants and bonding she'd received in the past. Although she was nervous about opting for veneers, fearing the same results, Dr. Dorfman encouraged her to take the next step. Haas' first visit to his office in Century City, CA, involved a Zoom whitening session so that the new tooth would match the color of the rest of her teeth. Next, Dr. Dorfman performed a mock-up so the laboratory would know the exact desired tooth shape. He then prepared Haas' mouth by shaping her three surrounding teeth and removing the existing implant.
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"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," Dr. Dorfman said. "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 the tooth with a good porcelain veneer." An implant impression is made with an impression coping tool to create the new tooth. Haas was able to give feedback on the particulars of the temporary shape and size, and once it was placed, Dr. Dorfman explained that the old, gray implant underneath would show through until her second appointment.
At Haas' next visit, the temporary tooth and implant were removed and swapped out for the new "tooth-colored" implant. The veneers were then placed on her adjacent teeth, and the crown was set on top of the implant. "Probably the trickiest part of making porcelain veneers look natural is not just the shape but the color," Dr. Dorfman says, as his lab technician paints Haas' new teeth to match her natural teeth.
After cementing on the four veneers, Haas gets to see her new teeth for the first time. "I know that whenever I smile in pictures now, I'm going to feel super confident about how my teeth look — and I'm not going to shy away from smiling in pictures anymore," she says.