Smile Enhancement with Porcelain Veneers

Hi everyone! It’s me, Doctor Joyce Kahng, cosmetic dentist, and welcome back to my YouTube channel. Today, we’re going to talk about the veneer process, how many appointments it usually takes and what happens at each appointment. So, if you want to find out, stay tuned. Before we move forward, if you haven’t already hit the Subscribe button, so you never miss any of my videos on cosmetic dental procedures. So, the first thing I’m going to do is put out a disclaimer; this is just how I do things in my office. This is not how every dentist does things, but I do find that most cosmetic dentists do things in a similar-ish fashion. So, if you’re wanting to know a little bit more about what to expect when it comes to timelines and what things we’ll be doing in the office at each different part of the procedure, this is the video for you. So, the way I prefer to start this whole process is through a virtual consultation. I do offer virtual consultations. They are free and most of the patients find me through Instagram. In my typical virtual consultation, people just send me a photo of their full face and of their smile and let me know what they don’t like about their smile or what they want improved. And then I’ll record them a personalized video, letting them know whether they’re a good candidate for veneers I also go over quotes. I will quote the patient how much this procedure will cost them, and then I’ll also go over financing options with them so that they know how to move forward if they want to move forward with me and my office. I also go over roughly the appointments, how many appointments it will take for them to finish up the process. The next step is to book your appointment and actually come into the office so that we can meet face to face. So, this is the first visit in the office, visit number one and what we do there is an in-person consultation. Usually if somebody has done a virtual consult and they come into the office, they are ready and wanting to move forward. And so, what we do in that first visit is to get a set of x rays or you can have them sent over from your dentist. I just need something on file to make sure there’s no cavities or anything that I need to be worried about. Even a lot of bone loss can be precluded from being a good candidate, and I can’t see that from a virtual consultation. So, we’ll double check all those things and I will take a look at your mouth. I’ll take a look at your file, make sure that we can move forward with the same plan that we had discussed in the virtual consult. Then I’ll take photography and scan your teeth and gather a lot of information about your smile. It shouldn’t hurt. It shouldn’t be painful. It’s just a matter of me taking a lot of pictures, so that I can gather all the information. I need to design your smile when you leave the office. Oftentimes, what I prefer for patients to do is to bring three pictures of smiles that they absolutely love. It could be their friend’s smile. It could be a celebrity. It could be close up of the teeth. But I want three of the smiles that they love because what I’ll do next is design a smile that I think looks good in their face and in the framework of their lips. I don’t want to copy exactly what another smile looks like, but I’ll gather inspiration so that I know what looks beautiful to you. Once I get a good feel of what I think will look good on you, I’ll gather all those records and send them to the lab. And I work closely with the lab so that we can design a potential mock-up. This is what we call a wax up. It is a model of your teeth, but instead of your teeth, they’ve built up each tooth to what it could potentially look like, and it’s all just made out of wax. So, it’s really cool. And I think that designing a smile in this way is lowkey one of the most important parts of the process, because we do not want to drill the teeth not knowing the direction that we’re going in. What we may also do at this visit is do in office whitening session because oftentimes people are working on your upper teeth, but we don’t want there to be such a contrast between the upper teeth and the lower teeth. And so that is a really good appointment to do whitening. Okay, so once that appointment is done, it’s going to be around two weeks until your second appointment. The second appointment is the long appointment. that is appointment that I always tell patients, come dressed comfy, come dressed in sweats, don’t look good for this appointment. I’m not going to take pictures of your face or anything like that; only pictures of your teeth. Just be ready to rock and roll. So, the length of this appointment can range depending on how many veneers we’re actually doing. I will say that if we’re doing eight to ten veneers, look at spending about five hours at the office. We’re not drilling the entire time that you’re there. We’re really just taking records. Again, a lot of this is recordkeeping. It’s taking photos because we want to communicate with the lab ceramist to make sure that the color comes back right, or that all the little things that we want in the smile are translated into the porcelain. A few things to be aware of for this visit: you will be numb for this visit. So, it shouldn’t be painful at all. And if you find that it’s painful, we can always get you more anaesthesia, so just communicate really well with your dentist. And we will also be taking impressions or scans of your teeth. Near the end of this procedure, we will be putting temporaries on and the temporaries are made based off of the mock-up, so you can test out the mock up in your mouth and see how you like it. If we need you, we can make any little adjustments, for example, if the temporaries look too long. We definitely want to make those changes right on the temporaries, so that we can scan that and again communicate with the lab, the length that we desire. Then for the next three weeks, you will be wearing those temporaries and trying them out in real life. I definitely give all of my patients very strict post-op instructions. I give you all the tools that you need in order to take really good care of your temporaries. It’s actually so important to take very good care of the temporaries because we want you to come back with, healthy, crisp, pink gums, and that will help with that last appointment. Between the second and the third appointment is usually around two to three weeks. That third appointment, you will come back. Again, It’s a little bit of a longer appointment, but not as long as the first one. Come dressed super comfortably. Again, we’re not taking too many photos of your face. The third appointment is all about installing your veneers. I think it’s really funny when people say install. Usually, we tend to say cementing. That same sort of concept. Just to give you an idea of how long this appointment may be for eight to 10 veneers, it’s around three to four hours. I don’t spend the full three to four hours just installing your teeth. There’s a process, and part of that process is taking off your temporaries and trying in the final porcelain veneers. I always do it with a try and paste, not with a real cement, because I want to show the patient and make sure they love it. Sometimes it’s a little bit hard to tell if the gums are puffy, whether you love it or not, but at least we can know whether we nailed the shapes and colors. If there’s ever something up, then I give the patient an opportunity to send it back to the lab, I want to send it back because we don’t want to install these if you don’t absolutely love them. And once we get the green light from the patient that they love their veneers, we start the process of cementation, and that’s just a little back and forth between myself and my assistant. Again, you will be numb for this appointment and the process actually goes really quickly. Once we get the okay to install them. In that third appointment, we’ll also take x rays just to make sure that everything is fully seated, sealed and looking beautiful. Once they’re in we spend the rest of the appointment just cleaning up all the cement, polishing those teeth and making sure that your bite feels the best that it can. Sometimes it is a little bit tough to know whether your bite is spot on, especially when you’re numb. So, we always have a fourth follow-up appointment. Also, at the end, what I do is take another scan so that I can make either a set of retainers or a night guard for the patient. And then you are done. We are done with all the heavy lifting portions of this procedure. Now it’s just a matter of letting those gums heal and getting used to your new smile. There is a bit of a transition period where you’re not used to your smile yet, and that’s okay. It takes time for us to accept and to fully love the newness of something that we’re not used to seeing. But I find in a few months’ patients really, really love their smile. They get used to it, and they can’t believe they’ve waited so long to get it done. The last appointment is the fourth appointment. It’s an easy feel-good appointment. I will give you your retainers. I will adjust your night guard. We will also take final photos for those fabulous before and after photos. These days. I also love taking full face photos. Obviously, I won’t post them on Instagram or anywhere if you do not want me to, but I love seeing the before and after of the full face. If you do get a little bit dressed up, maybe use a fun color for your lip color and then we’ll take those after photos. Ultimately, when people look at your teeth, they’re not looking and nitpicking all the small little details like what we tend to do to ourselves. What makes a really beautiful successful case is when the smile matches the face and just enhances the face. All right. That’s my process. One two three four appointments, always same, and you are done. I would recommend follow ups with your dentist at least yearly. The reason I say that is because a lot of the people that come to me, I’m not their primary dentist. They have a dentist elsewhere, but they came to me for their cosmetic work because that is my specialty. And so even if you have another dentist elsewhere, please make sure to follow up with your cosmetic dentist at least yearly just to make sure things are looking Okay. If you’ve made it this far, don’t forget to subscribe and I will be back next time with more videos on cosmetic dental procedures. Thank you so much for watching, bye!