The term lengthening in dentistry has a specific meaning. It means taking a dental crown and making it longer. You may be wondering what I am talking about because your perception of what a crown actually is maybe different. Well, dentists like me use the proper term "crown" to refer to the natural tooth you see in a smile.

In this type of crown, it is the part of your tooth that you see above the gumline.

The more common usage of the word crown is what we say to mean the fabricated material that dentists put on your damaged teeth.

It is confusing, as I said, but I hope you can now see the difference.

There are a lot of people with gummy teeth. I don't mean people who eat gummy bear candies. I'm talking about those whose gums are so dominant that your natural teeth may look small compared to the gums. When you smile, people see more gum than teeth.

People who seek treatment in my Westland dental office like to go away with a nice smile. They want to get rid of their gummy look. Or there may be dental reasons to reduce gum and go for longer crowns.

The procedure to make dental crowns longer is fairly straightforward. During the process we need to zap away some gum so there is more white visible. This gives the impression that your teeth are longer. Sometimes, a porcelain crown might have to be put in. If so, we may need to disturb a little bit of the jaw bone. But, generally, we try to limit ourselves to the gum.

When doing crown lengthening at my Westland dental office, we will give you a local anesthetic. Now it's time for some cutting. For this I can use a laser or some other cutting device to trim away at the edges of your gums.

You may also need work on adjacent teeth. This is to prevent me from taking off too much gum from one area. When it comes to this aspect, I'm very careful and I have done a huge number with great results.

If the job calls for a porcelain crown, we can't put the real thing on straight away. I must prepare your tooth first before completing phase one of your treatment with a temporary crown. After maybe one month, or less, you return to our office. This is when we will give you your shiny new, lab-fabricated crown.

You would know best why you want to undergo crown lengthening. If the main purpose is to make you smile better, then you don't need to do anything more. But you might feel you need veneers as well. Or even things like my other Westland cosmetic dentistry.

I hope we can meet soon to discuss how we do our cosmetic dentistry, at our dental clinic here in Westland.