I have two congenitally missing lateral incisors. I am 25 years old, and nothing is wrong with my teeth besides this. What is the least invasive way to fix this?
One additional problem is that there isn’t enough space to fit replacement teeth in those spaces.
- Sun from Australia
Sun,
The “least invasive” way isn’t going to be the easiest, the least expensive, or the fastest way. But I can see where, if there is nothing wrong with your other teeth, that you would want to not alter those teeth if at all possible.
The first step would be to separate your other teeth to allow more space for the lateral incisors. This would require orthodontics. Be careful with this – you may end up with a general dentist who wants to move these teeth with Invisalign invisible braces. This is tempting, because it doesn’t require any metal brackets and it’s faster. But Invisalign doesn’t work well for a situation like this, because it would tend to tip the teeth. You need to have the roots well separated in order to fit an appropriate dental implant into each space.
Then, have dental implants placed in those spaces, allow those to heal, and then have crowns placed on those teeth.
The other good alternative, which is quite invasive, would be to do zirconium bridges replacing these front teeth. We have a case like this displayed on our website, where there were impacted canine teeth (see Jennifer’s zirconium bridge story). The adjacent teeth would be crowned, and they could be shaped so that the sizes of the teeth would be harmonious without requiring any orthodontics.
For more information, you may want to read our pages about the advantages of a dental implant vs a dental bridge.
I hope this is helpful.