My mom had me see an orthodontist while I was younger and the orthodontist had two of my teeth pulled because I didn’t have much space. I’m not quite sure why, but he went with the two nearest my two front teeth, which means that my pointier teeth are closer to the front than they should be, if that makes any sense. I’m 26 now and my teeth have shifted some, so now there’s a big gap between those teeth and my front teeth too. It looks so bad. I’ve been considering going in and seeing if an orthodontist will give me braces again to close the gap, but that’s not really what I want. If possible, I’d like the pointier teeth shaved down or moved or something instead. After all these years, is it still possible to correct what the first orthodontist did?

Thank you,

Tammy

Dear Tammy,

It sounds like you had your lateral incisors removed, which isn’t very common because people wind up with the problem you currently have- it never looks quite right. Plus, the canines play a crucial role in the side to side motion of chewing, protecting the back teeth from undue stress, so those are not usually moved much. With that said, what’s done is done and now you want to see about fixing it.

You’re probably right about not just having the gap closed again. Even if you see a really good cosmetic dentist, it would be difficult for him to make your canines look like lateral incisors. The teeth are built so differently. If there isn’t enough space to replace the lateral incisors that were taken, you may have to go that route anyway, though. If you do have a considerable amount of space, you may be able to go through another round of orthodontics to straighten things up and shift the gap, so you could have something like dental implants, a bridge, or partial denture made.

The bottom line with this one is you’ll want to see an orthodontist and a dentist who specializes in cosmetic dentistry to do an exam and x-rays. Every case is a little different and it’s difficult to know how much space you have to work with. With something this extensive, you’ll probably want to get a couple of opinions, so you can get a good feeling for what’s best and you’ll want to see someone who has preferably handled a case similar to yours before. You can fix it and make it look better than it did before, but it’ll never be quite the same as it would have if those teeth weren’t extracted.

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