Do not ignore the bite!

This patient was referred by her family, who we also helped fix a pretty crazy situation.

She had complaints of tooth pain, and that her front teeth were too far out front. She had recently had crowns done on them, and unfortunately the teeth were becoming mobile. She said she kept going back to her old dentist, and they kept doing one tooth at a time and shaving things down.

I told her, we really could tackle this two ways. The first was to replace things that broke, as they broke, but there was not much I could do to help with the mobility or with the biting pain. The other was to completely rebuild the bite.

The metaphor I use for this is that your teeth is like a beach house that is built on stilts, we can’t just change one stilt we have to raise or lower them all together, and they have to be level for the house to not sink into the ocean if there is a storm!

She opted to fix everything. One of the hardest decisions for a reconstructive and implant dentist is when to save teeth vs when to take them out. We opted to use her exiting implants were we could, save the upper teeth, and remove the lower anterior teeth – since the mobility, bite, and bone loss was compromising their prognosis.

This process took 6-9 months, so about twice as long as it takes us to do an implant-only restoration, but the results keep her proprioception and give her more options in the future for the upper arch.

This case is entirely Katana YML zirconia, the bottom arch is over a titanium bar with individual crowns and the upper arch is individual crowns.

Thanks for trusting us with your smile, bite, function, and confidence! For more information about implants, options for restoring your smile, or the differences between fixed and removable implant solutions, follow us on Instagram @FantaskiSmiles and send a DM with any questions. To schedule a consultation, please call (678) 845-8658.