FP-3 Case 7 · All-on-X · Implants
Six Months, and a Different Face
He had stopped laughing properly.
Not stopped laughing. Stopped letting it show. A hand to the mouth, a turn of the head, the small management that becomes automatic when you are embarrassed by your own smile.
That was what he came in asking for. To laugh without covering his mouth.
A fresh start in Los Angeles
He came to us in 2018, having just moved his young family from Texas to Los Angeles, and wanting the fresh start to include this.
Behind the smile was a longer list. Bad breath he was self conscious about. Food trapping between his teeth. Pain and discomfort. Self esteem worn down over years. And the sense, even with teeth still in his mouth, that his face had collapsed inward around them.
He was equally clear about what he did not want. No dentures. No delays. And no hidden costs or additions to a plan he had already been quoted, which is what he had experienced elsewhere. He wanted a team he could trust.
On arrival
Teeth are facial architecture
The photograph that mattered most was taken from the side.
He had almost no chin, and he had been considering a chin implant to correct it. What the profile actually showed was a face that had lost its vertical support. When teeth shorten and a bite closes down, the lower third of the face collapses with them, the lip loses its backing, and the chin appears to recede and sag.
None of that was a chin problem. It was a dental problem presenting in the face.
Precision first, so the treatment can be fast
Everything was measured and designed before anything was placed: the tooth height to be re established, the lip support to be restored, the facial proportions to be corrected, and the way the lower prosthesis had to be shaped to carry the profile.
Meticulous planning is what makes speed possible later. The plan is the reason a case does not stall.
Complete in six months
After around five months of healing, the final phase began. Because the planning had been precise and the healing had gone well, the finals were completed in a single month.
Six months from arrival to finished result.
The final restorations are monolithic zirconium, a very strong material carrying minimal ceramic layering. Getting beauty out of a material used that way is down to our master technicians and the techniques developed here to make something strong look genuinely natural.
The result
The chin he was going to buy
Correcting the facial proportions did what a chin implant would have been asked to do.
Tooth height restored. Lip support returned. The lower prosthesis designed to hold the profile. His chin became more prominent, the sagging resolved, and the whole profile came back into proportion.
More balanced, more youthful, and achieved through dentistry alone. He never needed the surgery he arrived considering.
In profile
Still our patient
He has been our patient ever since.
Efficiency at the beginning, longevity ever since. The two are the same thing, arrived at through planning rather than luck.
The face
Smiling with no reservation
He enjoys his family. He goes to baseball games. He smiles with no reservation and no embarrassment.
The hand no longer goes up.
The face is part of the plan
A patient asks for teeth. What actually changes is the lower third of the face, the support behind the lip, the profile, and how old he looks in a photograph.
Planning for that, deliberately, from measurements taken at the start, is the difference between replacing teeth and restoring a face.
Every case is planned around one person's anatomy. Individual results vary, and what was right for this patient may not be right for you.