Dental Veneers Vs. Dental Implants: What’s the Difference?
Do you want to enhance the looks of your teeth? You may want a gorgeous smile that appears healthy to become an accessory you carry around daily. The confidence you express in your smile becomes visible to people and in pictures helping you make an excellent first impression.
Cosmetic dentists perform numerous smile enhancement procedures. The two most common are dental veneers and implants, both boasting unique benefits. However, the treatments differ in the way they work. Understanding the benefits of dental implants vs. dental veneers helps you select an option best suited for your needs.
What’s Different between Dental Veneers and Dental Implants?
Dental veneers are a smile enhancement procedure achieved by placing ultra-thin porcelain surfaces on chipped, broken, discolored, gapped, misshapen, and uneven teeth to improve their looks and help complement your smile. Dental veneers near you mask healthy and stable teeth, giving them an aesthetically pleasing appearance.
In contrast, dental implants are restorative procedures for replacing missing teeth using a surgical procedure. Implants aim to mimic the natural teeth anatomy, enabling them to restore your smile, appearance, and mouth functionality.
Dentistry has designed implants to replace a missing tooth while veneers help enhance a healthy tooth. Thankfully implants and veneers can complement the appearance of your smile by concealing cosmetic issues with it.
How long Does It Take to Get Implants or Veneers?
Before we proceed any further, it helps if you understand both procedures are unlike each other because one (implants) needs surgery and a lengthy recovery. The second (veneers) requires minimal teeth reshaping and customized surfaces in a dental lab.
The dental implant process requires several appointments with the provider lasting over four to six months. This is because the implants require time to osseointegrate with the body after their surgical insertion into the jawbone. After completion of osseointegration, implants become more robust than natural teeth. Therefore you must plan for multiple appointments with the provider over six months.
On the other hand, dental veneers do not require surgery or integration with your body. If you seek dental veneers in Ellicott city, you must schedule at least three appointments with the provider spread over three weeks to have the surfaces bonded to your teeth.
During your first appointment for dental veneers, the cosmetic dentist in Catonsville examines your teeth to determine whether they are free from infections like tooth decay or gum disease and suggest treating the conditions if you are. You can arrange your appointment for tooth preparation after the evaluation setting aside three to four hours for the meeting depending on how many teeth you want to have veneered.
The tooth preparation appointment entails filing the targeted imperfect teeth on the front and sides way past the enamel to make space for the porcelain surfaces. Although the procedure is uncomfortable, the Catonsville dentist gives you local anesthesia near the affected tooth to minimize pain. They also take impressions of your tooth to have your porcelain veneers customized from a dental laboratory and provide temporary acrylic veneers to protect your teeth. You can have your final veneers three weeks after tooth preparation when the cosmetic dentist bonds the surfaces to your teeth in your third appointment.
Which Should You Prefer: Implants or Veneers?
What you need entirely depends on the dental situation affecting your mouth. Dental implants serve you better if you have missing teeth and confront challenges with eating, smiling, and the consequences of tooth loss that involve jawbone resorption and infections in the voids between your teeth. Restoring your mouth functionality becomes an essential requirement that is best fulfilled by dental implants. Therefore if you have missing teeth, you must aim to replace them as soon as possible to avoid tooth loss consequences.
However, suppose you have structurally sound teeth without infections but are affected by aesthetic issues. In that case, you don’t need to consider replacing them but can find solace from dental veneers that help enhance their looks by covering the front surfaces of the affected tooth. Dental veneers best help conceal minor gaps between teeth, severe discoloration or staining, minor overlapping and overcrowding, and enamel erosion.
Dental implants are solutions for replacing missing teeth, and dental veneers are cosmetic dentistry processes to enhance the appearance of existing healthy teeth. Dental implants are excellent for tooth replacements, while veneers remain unique in improving the looks of ungainly-appearing teeth. Depending on your situation, the Catonsville cosmetic dentist can help you enhance your smile using veneers or implants by suggesting a therapy that best suits your needs.
Excel Dental Care can help you improve your smile by providing dental veneers or implants if you need smile enhancements because of missing or ungainly teeth. Kindly arrange a meeting with them today to decide on the procedure that you find suitable for you.