A professional cleaning will usually remove superficial discoloration from teeth. However, the stains left by years of smoking or coffee consumption can discolor your teeth to such a degree that a simple cleaning may not be enough to leave teeth as white as we would like.
For such patients, beaching offers a quick and painless and relatively inexpensive way to brighten smiles that does not require that a veneer or crown be bonded to the tooth.
Bleaching has become a common method used to restore moderately stained, or discolored teeth. There are two ways to bleach one's teeth, the first being in the dentist's office, the second is carried out at home.
If time is not an issue, and you prefer to minimize the amount of time in your dentist's office, at home treatment is probably the better choice for you. This type of treatment will require two trips to your dentist's office. During the first trip the dentist will take a mold of your teeth. This is used to construct a form-fitting mouth tray that will hold the bleaching agent against the teeth. The tray keeps the bleaching agent in constant contact with the surface of the tooth, and from concentrating on the gums. This is important because if the bleaching solution remains in contact with the gum tissue for a prolonged period, it can irritate, or even burn the gums.
During the second visit your dentist will ensure that the plastic trays that have been made to fit your bite have been constructed properly and provide you with the bleaching solution and schedule a follow up visit to track progress and to make sure that there are no adverse affects to your gums. You should see a significant improvement within two weeks.
While many pharmacies sell over the counter bleaching kits, we discourage their use, since damage to the gums is a possibility.
The second kind takes place in your dentists office during a longer single visit. The benefit with this option is that benefits are immediate and no follow up visit is required. This method involves your dentist using a dental dam to isolate individual teeth and then use a combination of a bleaching agent and a powerful ultra violet light.