I have a gap between my front teeth I would really like to fix. Unfortunately, the tooth on the right is a dental crown and the left is a crown attached to a dental bridge. Is there a way for me to close this gap without having the fixtures replaced? Maybe by putting something like Lumineers on top of them?

Peggy

Dear Peggy,

Years ago, Lumineers would advertise something like you mentioned. They told patients that old crowns can be restored by placing Lumineers on them, but it ended up not working out as well as they hoped. First, porcelain does not bond to porcelain as well as it does to the natural tooth structure. Second, it takes as much work to place them over crowns as it would to just make a new crown. Finally, you have double the risk of failure because now there are two things bonded.

I am curious why your dentist didn’t place the crown and the bridge in a way where there was not a gap to begin with. That makes me wonder about his skills. In reality, because of that you will likely have to have these two procedures re-done. You don’t want to re-do just one of them because the porcelain would be “lopsided”.

There is a possibility you could have someone do a repair by bonding composite to porcelain, but they would need to have some experience with dental bonding and some special equipment. Your dentist would need to use a micro-etcher on the areas of porcelain near the gap. After that, they’d need to etch the area with a hydrofluoric acid gel. Then it would need to be primed with a silane coupling agent. Finally, a bonding resin and then a composite bonding applied to match the color of your crown and bridge. As you can see this would take some specialty skill. I’m not sure your dentist has it if he or she was not able to apply your procedures without a gap to begin with. If you want to try this repair method before resorting to replacing everything, I suggest you see an AACD accredited dentist.

This blog is brought to you by Philadelphia Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Michael Weiss.