Shaping and Repairing Teeth – A Case Study
They say the only constant is change. This applies to the human body and of course the mouth. In some people, grinding of teeth is a constant problem, which begins with a small amount of wear. The constant wear, unfortunately, increases markedly as the jaws come closer together.
But there’s more…
Once the enamel has been worn through the next layer, the dentine, wears even faster forming craters in the tooth. When the crater is deep enough, the ring of remaining may fracture off or worse still, the tooth cracks and sections can break off.
Loss of teeth for whatever reasons causes surrounding teeth to “fall” into the space. This is via tipping, tilting, rotating and even opposing teeth moving into these spaces. The bite collapses and normal chewing is altered and can become aggressive.
The case shown in the photo was caused by a heavy bite and altered chewing patterns. This caused the patient wear down the adjacent right tooth and half wear incisal edge of the left tooth the left.
If we were to only build up the left tooth, the filling will not last as the bite now has worn a path into the tooth. The front teeth in this case would be better if the left tooth was adjusted to match the right tooth. This would allow the chewing motion to continue uninhibited.
However, the bite had sheared a triangular piece off on the front edge of the tooth. Smoothing this would have mis-shaped the tooth’s appearance. So filling material was placed to replace the lost tooth structure without building up the bite.
This treatment resulted in a more natural appearance, confirming to the patient’s current bite. The question that needs to be asked is “why did this happen?”.
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