Darin O'Bryan, D.D.S. In cases where we have super eruption of the anterior teeth we may need to reduce the incisal edge length and do either hard or soft tissue crown lengthening to get the desired esthetic result. The trick is where do we want the incisal edge. Here is an easy and quick way to determine the final position.
The patient had excessive overbite and went through initial orthodontics to intrude the teeth. We got some movement but not as much as we would have liked. The patient was wanted to move on with treatment and we were able to determine that we could get a good esthetic and functional result given the current location of the teeth. We needed to find the final edge position. This is easy for wear case since you can add to the teeth based on the wax up but in this situation we can’t do that since there has not be length wear only some lingual wear.
To determine what the esthetics are going to be after shortening the front teeth I use a sharpie pen to “erase” the incisal edges. I do this both with the lip at rest and also with a smile to see how much gingival tissue we need to remove.
With this we can then probe for biological width and determine if we need osseous or soft tissue crown lengthening.
If you would like to learn more about anterior restorations with CEREC, check out cerecdoctors.com Level 4 by calling 877-295-4276.
