This tricky dental implant case highlights the difficulties faced when patients wait for a long time after tooth removal before they get a dental implant.
It followed a surgical removal of an ectopic eye tooth or canine.
The surgery on the palate left the remaining bone misshapen. As this impacts on the gum position around a dental implant, aesthetics were consequently more challenging.
The gum position becomes hard to manage as can be seen from the higher gum on the incisor just in front of the implant – the darker tooth.
We can see on the impression and mirror plan view that the tricky dental implant position lies a little further towards the outside which causes the gum to lift a little higher.
The patient and our technician discussed shading at length due to the darkness of the adjacent lateral incisor. We decided to match shading to the central incisors (front two) with a view to potentially adding a porcelain veneer on the lateral incisor at a later date.
The patient didn’t wait too long before embarking on the final stage of his cosmetic dentistry voyage. The final results looked fairly good, considering the challenges faced with respect to the adjacent tooth shading, history of surgery and gum position.
