How does tetracycline teeth stain happen?
Thursday, February 26th, 2009How does tetracycline affect the dental tissue to make it discolored?
How about the dosage of its consumption? And the age of its consumer?
thank you
Marshanti from Indonesia
Marshanti,
Before I answer your question, let me give a little background.
Tetracycline stains of the teeth are very difficult to treat. If you have tetracycline stains, I would strongly recommend that you get a highly experienced cosmetic dentist to treat them. The stains are embedded deeply in the tooth, and they are very intense. They don’t respond well to zoom whitening. They need to be masked with porcelain veneers.
Dentists that aren’t passionate about cosmetic dentistry or haven’t done very many cases tend to make one of two errors: either they make the porcelain veneers too opaque so that they look chalky and fake, or they make them too translucent so that they are still dark. Expert cosmetic dentists who have chosen dental labs that understand color and translucency can get a natural and beautiful result. Inexperienced cosmetic dentists also have problems covering enough of the tooth so that edges of the darkly stained teeth show.
Sometimes dentists will advocate full crowns for these cases, but that treatment is much more aggressive than is necessary and often results in fake-looking opaque teeth.
Tetracycline, when it is taken while the teeth are forming (ages 0-13), actually becomes chemically bonded to tooth dentin and becomes structurally a part of the tooth. Any therapeutic dose will cause a problem, but the larger the dose and especially the longer period of time it is taken, the more severed the effect will be.