Smile enhancement is gaining popularity since a beautiful smile helps boost your confidence, and has a positive influence on social relationships. Getting a gorgeous smile is not a dream anymore thanks to innovative dental procedures like crown lengthening.
Lakeview, Chicago dental practice offers crown lengthening procedures to reshape or resculpt the gum tissues to make your smile more aesthetically appealing.
What is crown lengthening?
Crown lengthening is a simple surgical procedure where the position of the gum around a tooth is adjusted to expose more of the tooth structure.
This is performed due to the following reasons:
- Cosmetic purpose
- Having extra gum tissues as seen in patients with a gummy smile can make the teeth look unnaturally short.
- Removal of excess gum tissues can restore and improve the aesthetic appearance of your smile.
- Restoration of damaged teeth
- Most often periodontal disease, dental decay, and trauma can cause severe damage to the teeth.
- Crown lengthening becomes necessary when the damage occurs below the gum line which makes it difficult to access the area for restoring the damaged teeth.
- Fabrication of dental crowns
- Due to insufficient space between the crown and jawbone, dental crowns can harm the gum tissues and the underlying bone.
- Properly fitted crowns allow better oral hygiene and comfort.
How is crown lengthening performed?
Crown lengthening is an outpatient procedure performed under local anesthesia (a numbing agent) to ease pain and discomfort.
The procedure is as follows:
- Your dentist will remove any temporary crowns from the neighboring teeth.
- Your dentist will make small incision/s (cuts) near the gum tissues (depending on the number of teeth involved) and pull them away to expose the underlying roots and bone.
- Your dentist may remove only the gum tissues, or may even remove part of your bone as well.
- The surgical area will be thoroughly cleaned with an antiseptic solution.
- The incision will then be closed using sutures and a periodontal pack will be placed over it for healing, and additional protection.
Aftercare
- Your teeth will look visibly longer immediately after surgery.
- Usually, it may take 3 months for the gum tissues to heal completely.
- Your dentist will prescribe pain killers, and antibiotics to ease pain and prevent infection.
However, you can resume your routine activities the day after the surgery.
Bottom line
Crown lengthening is a common dental procedure performed for both dental and cosmetic reasons. When performed by a qualified dental professional, you can expect your procedure to go smoothly, and increase the health, and longevity of your teeth.
