Composite Veneers vs Porcelain, which one would you choose?
By: Dr. Megan Mobley
This is one of our beloved employees. She had composite veneers placed about 5 years prior by a previous boss on her upper canines. She is congenitally missing her upper laterals ( #7 and #10) so she had orthodontic treatment to close the space and her upper canines ( #6 and #11) were reshaped as laterals. The struggle with composite veneers is they absorb stain over time and this is a perfect example of that. Porcelain restorations are color stable, meaning they do not absorb stain, they will remain the same color for the life of the restoration in your mouth. Our assistant was very sensitive to her appearance and would even cover her smile to try to hide her discolored composites. One day she asked me to fix her smile and I was happy too.
She had recurrent decay under the old composite veneers so we had to place full coverage crowns. The porcelain I chose was Obsidian (lithium silicate ceramic) which is a glass ceramic. I removed the old composites cleaned out the decay and placed new buildups. I used our 3M scanner for our digital images. Once we had our digital scans we sent the images wirelessly to our design software where I designed the crowns. Our mill was able to mill out each crown in about 15 minutes and then we placed the crowns for glazing and sintering in our furnace. Within a few hours we had a beautiful result that my assistant and myself are very happy with.