Caring for an Elderly Parent With Special Dental Needs

This Is Why Your Teeth Look Different After Gum Disease

10 December 2019

Joe Lawrence

If you've had gum disease in the past, especially if it was severe, good on you for putting it behind you and making a change in your oral hygiene habits. However, you may have noticed that something seems different about your teeth since having gum disease. Here's what you need to know about this problem.

What Happens During Gum Disease

When you have gum disease, gums do something called receding. It essentially means that they pull back away from the teeth, either moving up or down depending upon whether it's the upper or lower gums, respectively. This is a problem with all forms of gum disease, but it can be especially bad for people with periodontitis, the more advanced form of gum disease.

Aftermath

A lot of the damage that's done to your gums can be reversed when you no longer have gum disease, but the recession isn't one of them. Gums that have receded tend to lose a small amount of tissue that prevents them from extending to their full length again. This means that even after you beat gum disease, your gums will still be receded. This gives the appearance of your teeth being longer or larger than they are.

Repair

If you've already beaten gum disease, then you've already completed the first step of getting the appearance of your teeth back to normal. Now it's time to move onto repairing the damage that gum disease did. Receded gums can be repaired by cosmetic dentists. They undergo extra training past what standard dentists do just so that they can treat conditions like these.

When you head in for treatment, this is what your dentist will do. They'll examine your gums, as well as your teeth, to determine whether or not you still have gum disease. If everything looks healthy, they can perform a minor operation called grafting. This process takes a small strip of skin from the roof of your mouth. Once it's removed, the roof of the mouth is shut with stitches to ensure that you don't get any bacteria or food debris in the wound until it heals.

After that, the tissue is cut and shaped to match the natural look of your gums. Then, your dentist will connect it to the ends of your gums with more stitches. After a set amount of time, the stitches will be removed, and the gums and new healthy tissue will start to grow together. Once this process is complete, no one will be able to tell that you had a gum graft, and instead, all they'll see is a proper smile without the appearance of overly large teeth.

For more information, reach out to a business like Pinon Hills Dental.

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