Advice on Veneers

Fiske

Hi, all. So, this is something I'm going to have to make a decision about relatively soon and it's something I'd really like to have a few extra opinions on.

So, I'm 19 years old and I just finished my 18 months of braces. My teeth used to be severely crooked but they're now nice and straight and things seem swell in that regard.

However, because of intensive chemotherapy treatment I had when I was 15, many of my front teeth are stained brown. In addition, apparently none of my teeth have enamel anymore. The brown colour won't go away with cleaning, so my family and my dentist are keen on getting me veneers.

I'm not against getting them because the staining is bad and it's kind of pointless having straight teeth if the colour is awful, but we're in a bit of a debate as to whether composite or porcelain veneers would be better.

My mother isn't crazy about the idea of porcelain ones because they have to file your teeth in order to put them on. They're also worried that they might not stick to my teeth at all because of the missing enamel.

On the other hand, I heard that the composites stain quite easily...my mother said they'd last about 6 years compared to the 10-ish years of porcelain but I'm not sure if that's realistic given that they can stain (and I drink a lot of tea, which I won't give up for man, woman or beast! ).

My dentist (who kind of seems to think porcelain is a better long-term idea but is mostly just letting us decide what's best) is going to be putting a couple composites on next time we're there, because I'm covered for that. So I will get a chance to try composites out and I won't be making a decision on this completely blindly, but I'm hoping I can get a bit of advice here from people with more experience than me. Particularly with stuff like, realistically, how often would you need to replace composites? And how much of a big deal is the tooth filing they do for porcelain ones (because the idea of that sounds really scary, but the dentists I've met seem to have a preference for those).

Sorry for the long post!

btkm8unsl0w5r4

You have to have the tooth filled for composite veneers also if its just added on it will either not block out the colour as its not thick enough or it will look large and "goofy". You might try some intensive bleaching followed by composite. However ceramic veneers will generally look a lot better. Composite veneers may last 6 year but they tend to look pretty bad for about 5 of those years, ceramic veneers might last 10 years but they look good for all 10 (there is no finite lifespan on dental work BTW these are only averages).

Preparation is minimal but irreversible.