I am needing some advice. I went to my dentist hoping to get a smile makeover. I’d asked for porcelain veneers. He suggested I get something called 360-veneers which will be a better fit for me. I specifically asked if that would require my teeth to be ground down more and they assured me it would not and that only a very small amount will be removed. The problems started with the temporaries. Two of the 360-veneers keep falling off. They assured me that when the permanent ones were bonded, this would not be an issue. I started to have my doubts about their honesty when I saw my tooth after the 360 veneer fell off. It was a small nub! This is certainly not a “very small amount” by any reasonable amount of measurement. My fears turned out to be justified because after the permanent ones came in, those same teeth still had the crowns falling off.
I am doing everything they told me to. I am not eating anything hard. I am cutting everything up really small, and I am making sure to chew in the back. Can you help me? I am so stressed. I never know when they’re going to fall off and I don’t know what to do. They’re saying that I’m not taking care of them.
Erin
Dear Erin,
I am very sorry that this is happening to you. I’m going to be very blunt and say your dentist is lying to you. My alarm bells first went off when you said “360-veneers.” There is no such thing, because porcelain veneers only cover the front of your teeth and hug the sides a smidge. What wraps around a tooth is a dental crown.
There are some “ethically challenged” dentists who will unnecessarily push a patient toward dental crowns for their smile makeover because they don’t really know how to properly place porcelain veneers. You see, smile makeovers aren’t focused on in dental school. In some schools, they’re not even taught. Dentists who are truly interested in doing beautiful cosmetic work have to get post-doctoral training.
The thing that gets me even more about your dentist is he can’t even do the crowns correctly. This is one of the first things dentists are trained to do in dental school and most dentists go their entire careers without having even one dental crown fall off. Your dentist can’t seem to manage that. My guess is that he over tapered the teeth on the crowns that are coming off repeatedly.
Second, he lied to you about the amount of tooth structure that needed to be removed. I posted an image above that shows the difference between the tooth preparation of porcelain veneers versus porcelain crowns. You clearly described porcelain crown preparation. That is a second violation of ethics.
Finally, they are blaming you for something that is clearly their issue. When either porcelain veneers or porcelain crowns are bonded on properly, you can eat whatever you want! You don’t have to only eat soft foods. You don’t have to cut everything into tiny bites. You don’t have to shove everything to the back to chew.
I’m going to suggest that you ask for a full refund from this dentist. It is going to take a dentist of considerable expertise to repair whatever he did to make these crowns fall off the way they are.
This blog is brought to you by Hoffman Estates Dentist Dr. William Becker.