I had crowns put on my upper 8 front teeth and lower 6 front teeth. I had tetracycline stains. He kept trying to re-do the crowns, but they never looked right.
The first set of crowns looked really bad—thick yellow and badly contoured. The second set looked much better. The bottoms were still somewhat yellow but we were going to put them on and try to use a liner on the bottom to block out the yellow. He tried different colored liners and they made the crowns look blue or gray. So he made another more opaque set of crowns. They look like the porcelein a sink is made out of. I let him put them on because I figured if he tried again I don’t know if they would look better or worse but the front upper 4 look particularly bad. The lab tried to make them look more “natural” and blended some translucent color and it looks like gray streaks and spots. I didn’t notice to what extent until I got home and looked at them more closely.
– Kim from California
Kim,
I don’t know what to tell you, except that I hope other people learn from what happened to you. Tetracycline stains are very difficult to treat, and most dentists don’t have a clue about how to go about it. It appears that your dentist had never done tetracycline stains before. Very few have. And the whole thing just bombed.
You don’t need crowns for tetracycline stains – only porcelain veneers. Crowns require grinding the whole tooth down. Porcelain veneers just need the front of the tooth shaved a little. And it’s tricky to block out the intense dark color of the stain and still get the tooth to look natural. Dentists either don’t block it out enough, and the teeth look gray, or they block it out too much and they look like a toilet bowl. And it sounds like your dentist’s laboratory was also taking its first attempt at dealing with tetracycline stains.
You may be able to get your money back. You can try. My advice is not to be confrontational. First thing I would do, however, is find a qualified cosmetic dentist from our list of excellent cosmetic dentists in the Los Angeles area, and see what they think. Then I would go for getting all your money back and starting over. You can have a beautiful smile, but you need a genuine cosmetic dentist to do it.
– Dr. Hall
Related links:
Read our new page about tooth color.
Click here for referral to an expert cosmetic dentist.
About David A. Hall
Dr. David A. Hall was one of the first 40 accredited cosmetic dentists in the world. He practiced cosmetic dentistry in Iowa, and in 1990 earned his accreditation with the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. He is now president of Infinity Dental Web, a company in Mesa, Arizona that does advanced internet marketing for dentists.
Leave a Reply