Lengthening a crown means increasing the size of a dental crown. Most laymen think crowns are only those porcelain bits we put on your teeth. However, dentists usually understand the term "crown" to refer to what others can see in your smile. Meaning your natural tooth.

More specifically, it is what sticks out from the gumline and can easily be seen.

Crown is also used for the artificial material that dentists put on your damaged teeth.

Yes, it is confusing but the differences are pretty clear, I think.

You find quite a few folks with gummy teeth. It refers to those who have a lot of gum in their mouth. The gums are so much in excess that it looks as if your teeth are very short. Every time you smile, your teeth are dominated by your gums.

People who seek treatment in my Chagrin Falls dental office like to go away with a nice smile. They want to get rid of their gummy look. Maybe they might have medical reasons to increase the length of their crowns while easing up on the gum.

The procedure to make dental crowns longer is fairly straightforward. During the process we need to zap away some gum to give your tooth the appearance of being longer. In some cases, in preparing for a porcelain crown, we may go a little into the bone. The gum, however, is our main target and we try to avoid going into the bone.

If we perform crown lengthening at our Chagrin Falls dental office, we will give you a local anesthetic. I will then use either a laser or another implement to trim away at the edges of your gums.

Quite often, I also do the same for nearby teeth. This way, I'm not making it look uneven. When it comes to this aspect, I'm very careful and I have a lot of experience.

If I'm going ahead and making a porcelain crown, I have to do some preparation work before completing phase one of your treatment with a temporary crown. This temporary crown will be with you for about a month before you need to see us again for the next stage. The crown, which was built by the lab, we give you this time will stay for many years.

If you have chosen crown lengthening because you want to look better, then you don't need to do anything more. Even so, you might not want to stop there and go on to have some veneers. And there's also my other Chagrin Falls cosmetic dentistry to try out.

I hope we can meet soon to talk about our cosmetic dentistry, in our dental office right here in Chagrin Falls.