A beautiful healthy smile is often the first thing people notice about you. If you are looking to enhance or change your smile, you should explore the cosmetic treatment options Dr. Petroff offers. If you display excessive or uneven gum tissue, or if your teeth are chipped, cracked, or crowded, these conditions can be treated. A natural and healthy smile is invaluable. The difference it can make is hard to believe until you experience it for yourself.
Cosmetic dentistry is as much artistry as it is a technical skill. Dr. Petroff creates natural and healthy smiles that are designed to enhance your features, facial characteristics, personality, and lifestyle. Recognizing that patients are often apprehensive about undergoing cosmetic dental treatments, Dr. Petroff and her dental team spend time to explain procedures and answer your questions and concerns. Each patient is treated with personalized attention.
Dr. Petroff’s personal touch, clinical experience, and leading-edge technologies enable her to consistently deliver aesthetic results that surpass the expectations of her patients. When people think of cosmetic dentistry, the first thing they might think of is porcelain veneers, but they may not always be necessary. Very often, small adjustments can produce dramatic improvements. These can include smile whitening, gum recontouring, and composite bonding.
Porcelain Veneers
A porcelain dental veneer is a conservative crown that can totally change the appearance of your teeth by straightening, lengthening, and whitening teeth, providing you with a beautiful smile and more comfortable bite position. Made from a thin, custom-made piece of porcelain that is applied to the visible portion of a tooth. A veneer preserves a larger amount of the natural tooth structure, thus keeping the tooth very strong and durable. Porcelain veneers will not stain and are incredibly resilient and non-abrasive to opposing teeth.
Veneers will give you a beautiful, natural smile, and they can correct many different cosmetic issues. They’re the premier solution for discolored, worn, chipped, or misaligned teeth. They can also cover gaps between your teeth.
Your teeth will need to be prepared and shaped to accept the veneers, and this involves the removal your natural enamel, sometimes extensively. While the lab is creating your veneers, you’ll wear temporary veneers. When your permanent veneers are ready, Dr. Petroff will permanently cement them to your prepared teeth. The result is the ultimate in a beautiful, natural smile!
Minimal-Prep Veneers
For some people, traditional porcelain veneers may not be the best choice. An alternative to traditional veneers is minimal-prep veneers. They look the same as traditional veneers, but require less tooth preparation and enamel reduction.
Dr. Petroff uses IPS e.max minimal prep veneers. The material in IPS e.max veneers is much stronger than previous materials, but can be made much thinner. They have a beautiful, natural coloring and translucence and can give you a life-changing, dazzling smile.
Full-Mouth Restoration
There are many reasons why someone might need full-mouth restoration, where most or all of the teeth need some form of treatment, repair, or enhancement.
- Lost teeth due to disease or accidents
- Injured or broken teeth
- Worn-down or deteriorated teeth
A full-mouth restoration will likely need several dental disciplines to complete. General and restorative dentistry will involve filling cavities, treating any periodontal disease, and placing crowns or bridges, or partial or full dentures. If you have strong enough jaw bones, you could be fitted with dental implants to replace any missing teeth. You might also benefit from some cosmetic dentistry as well.
Fortunately for our patients, Dr. Heather Petroff has pursued training in all of these disciplines, and has invested in the newest equipment and techniques to be able to complete our patients’ treatments quickly and comfortably.
Gum Recontouring
When you need to have more of your tooth exposed to treat it below the gum or to make it line up better with other teeth, then Dr. Petroff can lengthen the tooth by removing or reshaping a small amount of the gum surrounding it.
Dr. Petroff uses a laser procedure to remove and reshape uneven or excessive gum tissue. Sometimes the gums can cover the teeth so much that they look distorted. By removing and reshaping the excess gum tissue, Dr. Petroff can expose more of the tooth and create an improved shape.
Dr. Petroff is one of only 700 dentists in the country certified to use the Solea soft- and hard-tissue laser for treatments like gum recontouring or other soft-tissue problems like gum disease. The Solea laser is fast and precise, eliminates bleeding during gum treatments, and in many cases, reduces the need for anesthesia.
Composite Bonding
Composite bonding is used to restore cavities, often called white fillings. We can also cover stains and cracks in your teeth with the composite dental resin and even fill in a chipped tooth so it looks as good as new. It takes years of training, an artist’s eye, and careful attention to detail to make the dental bonding completely indistinguishable from a natural tooth!
Composite bonding uses a resin that has been dyed to match your natural tooth color. Dr. Petroff paints the resin onto your tooth in thin layers, shaping and drying them with a high-intensity curing light one-by-one to build the desired shape. The resin is hardened with a high-intensity light until it’s dry. Dr. Petroff then smooths and polishes it until it’s indistinguishable from the rest of your teeth.
Smile Whitening
The safest, quickest, and easiest way to effectively whiten your teeth is with an in-office treatment using Philips Zoom2. After careful evaluation, Dr. Petroff chose Zoom2 because of the amazing whitening effect and the clinical trials that support the results. The Zoom2 technology is safe and reliable and is clinically proven to whiten teeth up to eight shades in just one office visit.
The lamp used with the Zoom2 treatment has 3 comfort control settings to assure you of no post-whitening discomfort.
The in-office whitening can be completed in under an hour. But if you’d rather whiten your teeth at home, Dr. Petroff will make up whitening trays for you using the Zoom2 gel. You will use your trays over a period of time to get your teeth to the desired shade.