I asked for more detail, and Anna sent photographs of the work, plus this narrative:

Dr. Hall,
Having gone through this process twice, (the first time with a general dentist) I can honestly say that this cosmetic dentist is very skillful, meticulous and really good at what he does. His mock up for the temporary was beautiful and I was very impressed. I think the problem here is the lab or lab technician. I loved the temporary and expected the final result to be like the temporary or even better, but it wasn’t.

Anna’s temporary veneers

When I tried on the veneers, right away I saw the dullness, the opacity and the lack of texture. The color was also a few shades darker than the color I picked for the temporaries. I told the dentist I didn’t like them. He said he had to make some adjustments to the veneers so the surface looks dull, but the dullness will go away when he polishes them at the very end. Opacity: he said he could send them back to the lab to make them more translucent but it won’t look nice. Lastly, he said if I wanted to know whether remaking the veneers will be nicer than this, the answer is, no. So he left me no option and I caved to have the veneers cemented that day.

Anna’s permanent veneers

My veneers are shiny, but lack the gloss and texture so therefore they look dull. And in close examination, I see a lot of tiny scratch marks/abrasions. I called the dentist the following day to let him know I wasn’t happy. My follow up appointment is in two weeks to see what we could do.

It’s disappointing that I paid a lot for these veneers but I feel like the quality is below average. This is the reason why I want them redone, but I don’t know if it’s worth it putting my teeth through the trauma for the third time. I’ve attached pictures of my temporary and my cemented veneers.

–Anna from California

Anna,
Thanks for that detail and the photos. That’s very helpful.

First, for the question you asked. No, there is no significant risk to your teeth for re-doing the porcelain veneers another time. In the first place, the preparation for porcelain veneers should be shallow, so there is little irritation to the teeth. When the teeth are prepared for veneers the first time, you do get some irritation to the teeth, but then they recover from that. And in the process of bonding the veneers, the bonding resin seals off the microscopic tubules in the teeth so that the second time, when the first set of veneers were ground off, there is less irritation. That irritation comes mostly from those tubules being opened up by the enamel being ground down, so sealing them off reduces that. The same thing for the third time. I am aware that some dentists will say that re-doing veneers is risky for the teeth, but they say that because they’re trying to talk the patient out of re-doing them–they want them to be quiet and just go away.

But then there is the question you didn’t ask, which is how are you going to make sure you get it right this time? Let me back up a little and explain what went wrong with your second set of porcelain veneers. To do that, I’m going to give you a little insight into how I screen the dentists I recommend on mynewsmile.com.

The first hurdle they need to cross to get recommended by me is that their work needs to pass inspection. I need to see good quality close-up photographs of their work. Knowing what to look for, I can judge whether they know what they are doing or not.

But it’s the second part where it gets interesting. If their work passes my inspection, then I need to interview them on the phone. The most important thing I ask them is about how they insure that a patient will love the new smile they create–your question. How do they avoid your situation, where they do a smile makeover and the patient isn’t happy? They will tell me some type of procedure they go through. Many of them have a procedure like you experienced–the dentist will talk to the patient, determine their smile design preferences, and from that create a wax model of their smile. From that wax model they will make a set of temporary veneers that the patient will wear to make sure they like the design and the color. Then they will have the laboratory technician make the permanent veneers to the same specifications. They can take an impression from which they make a model of the veneers to send to the lab, and they can also take a photograph to send.

But then comes the interesting part. I pose a hypothetical situation to them, and this is how I put it: “Say you go through all this, and then I assume you have some type of try-in of the veneers that come back from the laboratory. So you try them in, and you ask the patient how they like the veneers, and the patient says, ‘Oh, I guess they’re okay.'”

In order to qualify for me to recommend this cosmetic dentist, they need to pick up on this lukewarm response immediately and be highly disappointed that the patient isn’t more enthusiastic about how they look. And they have to be willing to send them back to the laboratory technician to be completely re-made, if necessary, and refuse to bond them on to the patient unless the patient is not just satisfied, but excited about how they look.

This clearly didn’t happen in your case. The dentist, rather than addressing your concern about the color and the luster of the veneers, he pushed you into having them bonded on and told you that the dullness would go away later. Wrong response. And the dullness didn’t go away, did it? He would have flunked my interview with a response like that. All the great cosmetic dentists I know would have stopped right there and sent them back to the lab to be remade so that they had more sparkle, more lifelike translucency, and a brighter color. All those things are do-able.

The other glaring error here is that the permanent veneers were not made to the color you and this cosmetic dentist had agreed upon with the temporary veneers. This is way off. I think you have grounds here for a legal complaint, because the end result was misrepresented. I agree with you that the final veneers look too dull and the color is off from what the temporaries were.

So what should you do?

In looking over this dentist’s work as displayed in photographs on his website, I believe he is capable of beautiful work. So I would recommend as a first step trying to assert your rights and telling him you need this re-done. This is not fixable by polishing or trimming–your case needs to be re-done. You may show him my email, if you think that will help.

If that doesn’t work, get back to me, and I’ll see if I can line you up with a cosmetic dentist who is not only a good artist, but actually listens to his or her patients. They may be able to help you put pressure on this dentist to give you a refund.

And about this being the lab’s fault–it’s the dentist who gives the instructions to the lab, and the dentist who has to take responsibility for the final result. It was your dentist who decided to not send these back to the lab and demand better work. So you can’t blame this on the lab.

I hope this is helpful.

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