We are starting to get some e-mails of horror stories with Vivaneers.
Vivaneers are a specific brand of porcelain veneers. They are extra tough, and so they can be made a little thinner than other porcelain veneers: 0.3 millimeter instead of the usual 0.5 millimeter thin.
Consumers, please be careful. The promotions for this brand say that they can be placed without any tooth preparation. This is attractive to many people, but can cause a host of problems. When they are placed with a no-preparation technique, they will end up about two millimeters longer than your own teeth and bulkier, and there will be a slight ridge where they meet your natural teeth.
Another problem is that they are promoted to dentists who have no extensive cosmetic training. The ads in dental journals make it sound so easy to place them, so they can be a source of easy income for dentists. And while they are easy to place, anything involving smile design requires artistic talent and training. If the dentist is artistic and has the training, there can be some beautiful work done with Vivaneers, for sure. But be careful.
We have one blog post where a visitor gave us a Vivaneers horror story you may want to read. Her dentist was a friend, and she decided to let him do Vivaneers on her. She had six done on the upper. They were too big, and she didn’t like how the canines looked. But, since he was a friend, she let him go ahead and do the lowers, too. After that she immediately developed problems with dry mouth, problems speaking, and dry lips with accompanying lipstick problems.
All of this is related to having something added to her teeth, even though it was thin. The proper way to have done these would have been to shave the teeth back, ever so slightly, to make room for the porcelain.
Vivaneers are the same thing as Lumineers, just a different brand of the exact same type of product. Lumineers are made by Den Mat, and Vivaneers are made by Glidewell Laboratories. For more information, please read our Lumineers pages.
—Dr. David Hall
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