Our Blog
11
Mar
Invisalign Is Best If You Have Veneers
You decided to invest in your smile and you got it just how you wanted it. Orthodontic treatment followed by porcelain veneers gave you a beautiful smile. But if you didn’t take care of it by wearing your retainer, you may have noticed that your teeth have begun to drift back to their former positions.
You want to get your teeth straightened again, but you want a solution that will protect your veneers. If this is the case, then you are looking for Invisalign, which can move your veneered teeth back in place without damaging your veneers.
Invisalign Doesn’t Yank Veneers
Traditional braces are still around because they can do a good job moving your teeth, but they have some limitations when it comes to moving veneered teeth.
Traditional braces work by pulling your teeth into place using an archwire and brackets that are bonded to your teeth. It’s these bonded brackets that have the chance of damaging your veneers. When you have porcelain veneers, the brackets may have to be bonded to your veneers. The bond between the veneer and the tooth is comparable in strength to the bond between the bracket and veneers. Most of the time, neither bond will break, but there’s a chance that if one breaks it will be the veneer coming off your tooth. This is more likely if the veneer is bonded to dentin, rather than enamel.
Invisalign doesn’t use brackets and wires. It uses plastic aligners that mostly push your teeth into place. This doesn’t put excessive force on the veneers, the force is distributed more evenly around the tooth.
Invisalign Protects Veneers
Even if they don’t pull the veneers off, the glue that bonds braces to veneers can damage porcelain veneers. The glue can damage the surface, ruining the polish and even leading to an uneven surface.
With no bonding necessary, Invisalign doesn’t damage veneers this way.
In fact, Invisalign helps protect your veneers as your teeth are moving. During an orthodontic adjustment, your teeth might sometimes pass through some awkward configurations where they don’t fit together as well as they did in the past or will in the future. During this time, your veneers can be at risk from awkward tooth contacts that can cause them to chip. But with Invisalign, the aligner you’re wearing will protect your veneers from these unusual incidental contacts. Since you wear the aligner most of the time, the risk that something will happen to damage your veneers.
It’s normally best if you can get orthodontic treatment before you get porcelain veneers, but if you find yourself needing it the other way around, then Invisalign is your best choice.
If you are looking for top-shelf cosmetic dentistry in Beverly HIlls, please call (310) 275-5325 for an appointment with a cosmetic dentist at Nicolas A. Ravon, DDS, MSD.