How Lab Assisted Minimal Prep Veneers Satisfy New Patient Demands

Veneers are growing more and more popular as they infiltrate the common patient consciousness. How can you capitalize on this trend while providing personalized, exceptional patient care?

These days, patients are quite knowledgable about cosmetic procedures. Many patients even ask for certain brands of veneers by name. Veneers are indeed a wonderful option for certain patients, as they have stood the test of time with their strength, durability, and color stability.

Along with increased patient familiarity comes significantly more specific aesthetic demands. Patients may be showing more interest in their dental care, but they are consequently more confident that they know just as much as the dentist. They will request not ‘drilling’ on their teeth, when they expect the aesthetic result akin to a cut back and layered ceramic that necessitates tooth structure removal.

Meeting Patient Goals With Minimal or No Prep Veneers

As dentists, we must meet patient expectations and educate where we can. Luckily, veneer materials are also transforming for the better. In the past, we had very few options for providing ultra thin minimal and no preparation veneers. Powder and liquid or “stacked” veneers were used, but faced many disadvantages such as marginal integrity, wear compatibility, strength, and difficult fabrication.

Other veneer materials had additional disadvantages, from lack of doctor-ceramist interaction and no choice in ceramist to poor vitality. Dentists and ceramists alike have pushed for more optimal results through materials that satisfy a patient’s minimally invasive demands while providing aesthetic and functional results.

In recent years, the ultrathin pressed ceramic came onto the scene. It enables ceramists to press to full contour, cut back and layer, and finish down the restoration to .2-.3 mm.

Pressed ceramics provide many advantages including strength, designing contours prior to becoming glass, measuring thickness throughout the lab process, marginal integrity, wear compatibility, and working with an artistic ceramist. The disadvantages are monochromatic shade and difficulty in covering grey teeth. It can also be difficult to find a ceramist with the knowledge to fabricate them.

Minimal or no-prep veneers are a great conservative option for many dentists. A few of the guidelines and case selection for these veneers are proper pre-operative arch alignment, color change, lengthening, closing small interproximal spaces, collapsed buccal corridor, wear (when knowledge of source is present), and direct resin bonding cases.

What are your thoughts on the changing face of veneers in dentistry? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!