I have a gap between my two front teeth. One of the problems I am facing about that is that one of them is a dental crown and the other is a part of a dental bridge. Is there a way to close this gap with Lumineers or should I have them replaced?

Candace

Dear Candace,

I’m going to say right off the bat that your dentist should NOT have placed these where they left a gap. He obviously does not care about appearance related dentistry. However, what is done is done and you can only move forward from here.

Typically, a dentist will fix a tooth gap by using dental bonding, but that will not work well with your dental work. There is a method that can do it but stains usually develop within a relatively short period of time.

As for Lumineers over crowns, the Lumineers company actually ran a campaign promoting that some years back that ended up flopping for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. However, even if it were a good option, I would definitely suggest you see another dentist to have it done. Your dentist does not appear to care about the aesthetics of his work, just the function. That is not a quality you want in a dentist for any type of cosmetic work. You’d want a skilled, artistic cosmetic dentist.

Bonding porcelain on porcelain, which is what would happen in the case of using Lumineers, is never as stable as bonding porcelain to natural tooth structure. Because of that you risk two sets of bonding failure. One from the original dental work and another from the Lumineers placed on top of the dental work.

When you consider it is an equal amount of work for the dentist to just remove the old dental work than it is to place new over old, you can see why the campaign failed.

That is actually what I will recommend for you. Have your dentist, or better yet a more skilled dentist, redo your dental crown and dental bridge so that there is no gap. Make sure they only use a porcelain crown on your front tooth.

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