Crown Lengthening

Enhanc­ing Your Smiles’ Appear­ance and the Health of Your Gums With Crown Lengthening

Crown length­en­ing is a pro­ce­dure com­pleted in order to expose more of a tooth’s struc­ture above the gum line, or to “lengthen” teeth, essen­tially cre­at­ing a new gum-to-tooth rela­tion­ship. This pro­ce­dure can be per­formed to improve the appear­ance of a “gummy” smile, when there isn’t enough hard tooth struc­ture above the gum line to retain a crown or when the edge of an exist­ing or future planned crown or fill­ing is or will be too close to the bone.

The Crown Length­en­ing Pro­ce­dure for the Health of Your Gums

A crown length­en­ing pro­ce­dure is per­formed under a local anes­thetic and involves using small inci­sions to repo­si­tion the gum tis­sue and expose more of the tooth above the gum line to pro­vide enough reten­tion for a crown. Small amounts of bone are some­times removed to ensure that the edge of a crown or fill­ing is not too close to the bone to pre­vent or treat chron­i­cally inflamed gum tis­sues in the area of the crown or filling.

When the pro­ce­dure is com­pleted, sutures and a pro­tec­tive “ban­dage” may be placed to help achieve the new gum-to-tooth rela­tion­ship. You will need to be seen in one of two weeks to remove the sutures and eval­u­ate your healing.

Crown Length­en­ing for a Gummy Smile

When teeth appear too short and the gums are high around the crowns of the teeth, crown length­en­ing can be used to repo­si­tion the gums and bone around the teeth so that more of the crowns of the teeth are exposed to improve one’s smile, while at the same time main­tain­ing the health of the gums in the area.