What is "Cosmetic Dentistry"?
It’s a term that is being used almost in every dental office these days—meaning, it’s the focus on the cosmetic aspect of the work we do. Every dentist, to some extent, practices cosmetic dentistry—it’s just whether they’re good at it or not. What I mean by that is, if you got to get a crown put on your front tooth, filling in your back—there’s cosmetic dentistry that even goes into that filling in the back. Does the white match closely to the white that your tooth shows naturally?
The tooth that we put say, half a crown on or a veneer—does that match the other tooth and does it look cosmetically appealing? So, you can’t practice dentistry without the mindset of cosmetic, but some people focus on cosmetic as their primary approach.
In the past decade, technology and innovations in the dental field have given dental professionals the opportunity to create esthetic restorations by mimick- ing nature. The esthetic demands and expectations of patients have risen with the impact of social media, which has made it easy to access information about new technologies and a lot of dif ferent esthetic cases. Today, patients are more willing to have restorations that copy the form, colour, surface texture and func- tion of healthy and esthetic-looking natural teeth. This leads us to observe and imitate natural teeth and smile design not only from functional and mor- phological perspectives, but also structurally, optically and, more importantly, in harmony with the face. In any dental treatment, diagnosis has prime importance, since many steps will be planned and constructed on the basic cause of the problem. Then it will be time for treatment planning. It is very obvious that, whether you work in a solo of fice or in a group practice, team work is absolutely essential. The importance of working as a team is that you will be able to achieve the most ef ficient treat- ment planning. There are dif ferent factors that may influence the treatment planning, including formal education, clinical experience, continuing educa- tion, books and journals followed, exchange of information, working within a good team and, finally, the common sense of the dentist. On the other side, there is the patient, who has to be satisfied with the results of the treatment. In addi- tion to all of the above, the patient’s expectations, mentality, commitment, time and financial conditions will also be taken into consideration while planning the treatment. As we can clearly see, the way to ‘excellence’ is not easy, especially when the esthetic treatment should be executed using a minimally invasive approach. This definitely requires an understanding of the patient’s expectations and a great team ef fort between the general dentist, the specialists and the laboratory involved. Only then can we can truly talk about a successfully completed esthetic case.
——“Esthetic Dentistry” by Jonathan B. Levine, DMD
