Ultra Thin Porcelain Laminate Veneers
What is Ultra Thin Porcelain Laminate Veneers? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
In standard dental laminate treatment, the tooth should be reduced. However with this ultra thin dental laminates, there is no need for shaving any tooth down.There is no need for shaving any tooth down to apply ultra thin porcelaine dental laminates. They are so thin that they can be placed onto the teeth directly, even without anesthesia.Their thickness is 0,2 – 0,3mm (nearly as thin as contact lenses).
Comparing with conventional dental laminates
Conventional dental porcelain laminates have 0,5mm thickness. This may seem a small difference but keep in mind that this piece is adhered onto your teeth. It affects various things such as talking, eating, general pose of your mouth etc. It is best to have the thinnest material as possible.
Advantages of application without tooth reduction
- As there is no shaving down of teeth, it does not interfere the natural structure of your teeth.
- It encourages many people that wish to have dental treatment but do not want any tooth reduction as a preparation.
- As there is not any intervention made to your original teeth, the risk of having sensitive teeth is very low. However this side effect is more common in conventional dental laminate treatments.
- Ultra thin porcelain laminates are attached directly onto the tooth enamel, which gives the strongest hold for the laminates. But when the tooth is shaved off for a conventional laminate treatment, the laminates are placed onto the dentin layer. It is harder to glue the laminates onto this layer. This may cause them to fall off in the future if any physical trauma happens.
Don’t ultra thin laminates have any disadvantages?
Besides all the advantages, it also has some down sides. For this reason it should not be considered as “the best” method, but a “different method”. In some cases conventional laminate treatment can be more suitable for the patient. One of the disadvantages of ultra thin laminates is that these laminates have thicker ends that stays on the tooth gum than conventional laminates. This makes it harder to clean the bacterial dental plaque. This problem can be minimized by placing the laminates in a way that the end of it stays under the tooth gums. But in order to do that, the gums should be elevated slightly which requires the application of local anesthesia.
