PAUL ARTS
Grinding damage, restored with composite.
Henk is real grinder, as you can clearly see in the photos below. He is about 40 years old and his grinding caused a substantial loss of enamel and the underlaying tissue, the dentin. In the picture taken from the inside of Henk´s mouth, you can see the nerves shining through.
WORN TEETH
It is obvious that action is required before the nerves will be exposed by the grinding or that there is so little left of the teeth that restoration becomes impossible
In this case it was decided to treat the 6 upper front teeth only, both from the inside and outside, with composite.It means that once that is done, the rest of the teeth will not make any contact. This feels a bit awkward for a few days. The teeth that do not touch any other tooth will start to grow out again until they meet again. A remarkable phenomen that lasts for life and of which we take advantage in this case to create space for our restorations.
Below you see the first tooth restored to its new size:
Tooth by tooth is built up, a very precise and time consuming process. Not painfull because hardly any tooth structure is taken away, Henk has done that himself all ready ;-)
The gums are nummed a little bit in order to be able to finish the restorations smoothly just below the gumline.
Treament finished, frontal view ( note that the molars do not touch each other):
From the inside (the little blue marks are frm checking the bite):
And before and after:
By shaping the inside of the 6 restorations in a special way grinding will be minimalised. In the 2 years after treatment Henk was seen only once with a little piece off, he bit on his fork.
The composite will not last forever though and will probably have to be renewed in about 10 years time. Or it can be done in porcelain and last a lot longer. And in porcelain the aesthetics will improve as well. For a full restoration in porcelain click here