Question:
What would you recommend for tetracycline stained teeth that are healthy and straight?
—Johnna in Virginia
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Dear Johnna,
Porcelain Veneers Are the Treatment of Choice for Tetracycline Stain
Bleaching really doesn’t work very well for tetracycline stains. They just don’t respond well to bleaching or tooth whitening. They are too dark and too deep for bleaching.
Porcelain veneers are the treatment of choice for tetracycline stains. But you really need an expert
How Tetracycline Teeth Stains Are Unique
This stain is dark, and the surprise for dentists that haven’t treated this much is that the deeper they go into the tooth, the darker the stain gets. If they use ordinary materials, the dark gray or brown will shine through the bonding or the porcelain and the patient will end up with a gray tooth, not a white tooth. An expert cosmetic dentist knows how to block out these stains and still give you a natural translucency in the tooth.
Other Frequent Mistakes for Non-Expert Cosmetic Dentists Treating Tetracycline Stains on Teeth
Besides erring in not covering up these dark stains enough, non-expert cosmetic dentists will often leave dark triangles between the teeth that show through, or the porcelain veneers will have a dark halo near the base. Or sometimes, the dentist will concentrate on opaquing out the dark color and the teeth will end up pasty-looking and opaque.
Another mistake is that they can treat them too aggressively, grinding the teeth down using crowns, which aren’t really necessary. Well-done porcelain veneers, which require just shaving the fronts of the teeth, should give a beautiful result if they are done properly, as you can see in the pictures below. All three cases were treated with porcelain veneers.
Most expert cosmetic dentists will have stories they can tell you of re-doing the porcelain veneers of patients who had tetracycline stains treated by a non-expert. I had several of these cases while I was practicing, and have had e-mails from many disappointed patients, and all of the mistakes listed above have been mentioned in these e-mails. Read about one typical botched case from Kim in California.
And please don’t make the mistake that many visitors to this site have made, which is to read about these techniques and then think you can just tell your regular dentist about them and magically he or she will become an expert cosmetic dentist. I have many e-mails to illustrate that this doesn’t work. The information on this page is all available to dentists who really care about creating beautiful smiles, and if your dentist hasn’t been interested enough in creating beautiful smiles to attend the courses where these things are taught, my strong advice is not to trust him or her with this difficult procedure.
What Causes Tetracycline Stain on Teeth
Tetracycline is an antibiotic. It’s a fairly powerful antibiotic that kills a broad spectrum of bacteria, and it can be life-saving. However, when it is taken while teeth are forming, it deposits in the dentin and enamel of the teeth and creates a permanent gray or brown stain. It can be a uniform discoloration of the entire tooth or can occur in the form of horizontal bands of stain of varying intensity. They can range from mild to very dark.
—Dr. Hall
Here are three sets of pictures showing the beautiful results you can achieve when tetracycline stains are treated by an expert cosmetic dentist. This first case was performed by Dr. Thomas Dudney of Alabaster, Alabama. For more information, please see our page of Alabama cosmetic dentists. Along with the beautiful work, notice how much more relaxed and confident her smile is in the “after” picture:
dark tetracycline stain before
Tetracycline stain and missing teeth. Notice the dark brown stains in horizontal bands across the teeth.
Click the photo to see a more detailed picture. dark tetracycline stain after
Dr. Dudney covered her tetracycline stain with porcelain veneers and added a beautiful dental bridge to replace the missing tooth.
Click the photo to see a more detailed picture.
Dr. Dustin Nelson, Pasadena, California cosmetic dentist, did the case below, creating a beautiful smile for Cinta. Her teeth were crowded together at various inclinations and moderately stained from tetracycline. Remember, however, that the gray color gets more intense the deeper you go into the tooth, so even milder cases are difficult to treat. Dr. Nelson treated twenty teeth and created for her this beautiful smile that she can show off without embarrassment:
tetracycline stains on teeth before
Cinta before
Click the photo to see a full face picture tetracycline stains on teeth after
Cinta after
Click the photo to see a full face picture
Here is another case of a patient with deep tetracycline teeth stains, treated with porcelain veneers by an expert Texas cosmetic dentist, Dr. Craig Carlson of San Antonio:
ugly tetracycline stains
Before. You can see the dark bands clearly in this case.
Click the photo to see a more detailed picture.
After. Notice there are no dark triangles, no halo, no brown showing through.
Click the photo to see a more detailed picture.
Related topics:
Sharon in South Carolina has old bonding covering her tetracycline stain. It looks gray, and she wants to know what to do.
Click here for referral to an expert cosmetic dentist, qualified to treat these stains.
To return to the frequent questions page, click here.
Here’s another question from a patient who wants to bleach tetracycline stain.
To return to the frequent questions page, click here.
Misspellings: Some people write “tetracyclene” or “tetracyclene teeth.” Some people also misspell and are looking for information about porceline veneers. Some of them will write porcelin veneers. No matter how you spell these words, we’ve got the information.
Read Dr. Hall’s blog entry about Lumineers and tetracycline stain.