I ran across a post on eonline.com that appears to be trying to poke fun at LeAnn Rimes for her dental malpractice lawsuit.

It posts this pair of photos, saying that the left one was taken before the disputed dental work, and the right one was taken after.

The implication is that her teeth appear to have problems “before” and look fine now. The comments get into a lot of ridicule of LeAnn, with some implying that she is just being litigious.

Here’s some added perspective, from a cosmetic dentistry expert. The “before” picture is NOT “before” any dental work was done. There is serious inflammation and swelling around her upper right central and lateral incisors revealing problems with the dental work on those teeth. The other teeth don’t have this inflammation around them, so I am confident that there is faulty dental work there.

Here is another pair of photographs. On the left is a very early photograph. The teeth seem to be smaller than in the “before” photograph above, which seems to bolster my point:

The “after” photograph, by the way, I believe was taken in 2010. The teeth look a little too large. And someone in my office remembers seeing her after the dental work was done and remarking to her son that the work didn’t look good and it appeared to affect her speech.

I get a lot of e-mails from patients who have been victimized by shoddy cosmetic dentistry. I can entirely believe that this happened to her.

When I am looking at photographs from dentists to possibly recommend on mynewsmile.com, I insist on photographs that show some gum tissue and that are enlarged enough to show whether or not the gums are inflamed. The presence of gum inflammation much less than what is displayed here will disqualify a dentist in my estimation and I will refuse to recommend them.

Click here to find a recommended cosmetic dentist and read some about how dentists qualify to be listed here.