Laminates & Bonding

There are two procedures in dentistry that are pretty much of a cosmetic nature only. They are Porcelain Laminates and Bonding. A porcelain laminate is a chip of porcelain made up in the dental laboratory to fit over the outside of a tooth in order to improve the appearance of the tooth. It is normally bonded into place directly onto the remaining enamel of the tooth. Bonding is an adhesive procedure which is also used to correct the appearance of teeth by adding plastic or composite material to the tooth. Some examples of bonding and porcelain laminates are below:

	The patient above has a space between the two front teeth. One solution for the correction of this problem is braces to move the teeth together. Another is crowns. A simpler solution would be bonding...		Using bonding to add a composite material to each tooth adjacent to the space, the space can be eliminated with a completely natural appearance. This is done at one visit and is usually a very cost effective type of restoration.
	The patient in the photo above was very unhappy with the appearance of her upper teeth. They had discolored significantly with age.		The upper front teeth were restored with 6 porcelain laminates to improve the color and the overall appearance.
	This patient was unhappy with the appearance of the front teeth. They are very discolored and spaces have developed at the gum line areas.		The solution again was to place porcelain laminates. This time we did both the upper and lower front teeth and the results are excellent.