Diving into Complicated Cases with McKinney-Graham

Smile Transformation from Start to Finish — Complicated Cases with McKinney-Graham Case #1

One of the first cases I want to go over is a cosmetic case that we’ve pretty much gotten to completion, and I can walk you through some of the steps.

This patient approached us— he’d been in the practice for a long time, and he approached us about wanting to have a smile back—he lost what he wanted to see.

From the very first photo in the video, this is what’s called a “resting position” and when he was in a resting position, you really couldn’t see his teeth anymore, which you can see from this photo.

In most patients, in males, you want to see a little bit of their incisal length of the front teeth. In females, a little bit more, so there’s always a parameter we’re trying to follow. So, immediately as we start taking photos, I’m looking at, “Where does the patient show, what do they not show, what should they show?” So the lip at rest photo is usually a good starting point for me when looking at a smile.

The next photo in the video is actually his smile picture, and what I see here is—I’m still not getting the tooth display that I would want for a cosmetic smile and presentation.

I start to think about how much wear this patient has, I’m thinking about sleep apnea, nighttime grinding, I go through acid protocols…so there’s a lot that as as we’re looking at, “Hey, I want a new smile,” your dental provider is going through, “How did we get here, why did we get here, what do we need to correct?”

The next photo in the video is the intraoral photo—we take these series of photos, as well as a lot of additional photos when evaluating your case.

This allows me to further evaluate current maximum bite, where do the teeth fit together, what’s the puzzle piece right now, and where do I want it to go? This just confirms that he has a loss of tooth structure and height. If we look at where we want the teeth to be, especially just looking at this—his two upper central teeth— those should be significantly longer than they are now— I mean a good five to six millimeters could be possible here, just depending on where that lip at rest is going to finish.

So I see that he is having some wear, he probably has some some nighttime function that we need to take into consideration.

To give him a smile back I’m looking at opening up his bite, he needs length back.

(Continue watching the video to see how Dr. McKinney solves this case!)

McKinney-Graham Dental Arts – Hickory’s Finest Cosmetic and Comprehensive Dental Practice

Hickory appreciates what is “well-crafted,” and we believe that’s exactly how our teeth should be. Two premier Hickory dentists join together as McKinney-Graham Dental Arts—in our state-of-the-art facility—to provide YOU with quality cosmetic treatments and comprehensive dental care for our Hickory community.