Gummy Smile Correction
The Issue Is Not Just Gum Tissue
While healthy, beautiful teeth and gums are essential for an attractive smile, overexposed gums make many people feel self-conscious ,unattractive and less satisfied with their smiles—until they get a glimpse of themselves from a new angle in a photograph. That’s when they notice just how much their upper lip lifts or perhaps how a wide band of pink gum dominates their mouth.
The gummy smile shows much more gum tissue, compared to the teeth, when smiling. This can result to a smile that can look unnatural, making the teeth look very small in the process. Gummy smile treatment provides some of the following improvements:
- Allow your teeth to be the focus of your smile
- Expose more teeth more evenly
- Improve confidence when you’ve always been afraid to smile
- Enhance fullness of the upper lip
- Create a smile that looks relaxed
- Achieve harmony and balance between your smile and the rest of your face
What Causes a "Gummy" Smile?
One or more of the factors mentioned below can result in the development of a gummy smile
- Worn teeth, which can make the size of the teeth a lot smaller than what is normally acceptable
- A high lip line, which causes more of the gums to be visible even when the lips are at rest
- Teeth that are much smaller compared to the length and size of the gums that support them
- Teeth that have not fully erupted from the gums will make the gums look abnormally big
- Skeletal deformities of the jaw bone
Gummy Smile : An Aesthetic Problem
The Smile aesthetics is often affected by four main elements, which are the shape and size of your lips and teeth, your facial muscles and the gum tissue. Ideally, a good smile would show as little gum tissue as possible. The optimal smile line appearance should reveal the least amount of gum tissue possible. Gum tissue visible in the smile line should have balanced, even contours that are in harmony with the upper lip. Although a gummy smile, is not just an aesthetic problem.
It is possible that behind that gummy smile could be a serious underlying dental condition. For example, if you have a gummy smile caused as a result of how the teeth erupted and how the jaw developed, you may also have an uncomfortable or improper bite that could ultimately affect your long-term oral health.
Gum Re-Contouring
The proper treatment depends on correctly identifying the cause of the gummy smile. Correcting a gummy smile or gum re-contouring can be accomplished by one of two possible simple surgical procedures.
1. Gingivectomy; It is performed when the amount of gum reduction necessary is minimal such as in mild gummy smiles. During this procedure, a minimal amount of gum tissue is removed with a dental laser which is painless.
2. Crown Lengthening ; More advanced gummy smiles require more extensive tissue reduction, This is done by a procedure known as crown lengthening. During this painless procedure , the gum tissues are lifted off the bone and placed in a desired new position and some minor bone around the teeth is also minimally reduced and contoured. This is done so as to prevent the gum from possibly moving towards the teeth later on.
If you would like more information on minimising a gummy smile, please contact our patient care coordinator ; Yvonne on 01772 - 726932 to schedule an appointment for a consultation with Dr. Kaviani.
