I had crowns done many years ago on all my teeth. One of them felt loose last week so I scheduled an appointment with a new cosmetic dentist. He told me the crown needed to be replaced. That didn’t surprise me given its age. What did surprise me was he said I’d need to replace all of them in order for them to match. I was shocked to think he couldn’t just match the crown to the rest of them. Will I truly need to replace all of them?

Evelyn

Dear Evelyn,

There are cosmetic dentists and then there are cosmetic dentists. Confused yet? Because there isn’t a recognized specialty in cosmetic dentistry, any dentist can call themselves a cosmetic dentist. That doesn’t mean they’re actually skilled and artistic.

A truly skilled dentist could match a single crown or a single porcelain veneer to the rest of your smile. They wouldn’t have to place them on all your teeth in order to get a uniform smile.

You can have just this one porcelain crown replaced. However, you will not be able to replace it with this particular dentist. As I see it, you have two choices.

Your first option is to stay with this dentist and replace every crown. They’re aging and will eventually need replacing anyway. It may be easier for you just to do them all at once instead of having to schedule two appointments every time one of them fails. However, if that’s not what you desire, you have another option.

Instead, if you’re still happy with the appearance of the remaining crowns, you can just replace that one. The only downside to that is, as I said above, you’ll need to find a better cosmetic dentist for that to work.

Finding an Expert Cosmetic Dentist

There is a cosmetic dentistry website which screens cosmetic dentists who wish to be listed on the site to see if they’re skilled and artistic enough to create a stunning smile for their patients. They do this by having the dentist provide a list of their post-doctoral training in cosmetic work, as well as having them provide a large sampling of cases they’ve personally done, in order to verify their artistic skill.

Any dentist on their list will be skilled enough to offer you a single crown or a total smile makeover. Either will be stunning.

This blog is brought to you by Naperville Dentist Dr. David Newkirk.