Do you have a very noticeable white spot on your tooth that is visible when you smile? Sometimes I receive in my office people with this problem who had not considered solving it due to lack of knowledge, not knowing that the treatment is so simple and effective. But before going into details, let's start at the beginning.
Why do white spots appear on teeth?
The main reasons why these annoying white spots may appear are:
- Lack of mineralisation. In this case it occurs during formation, both in milk teeth and in permanent teeth, so that the tooth already appears with whitish stains, probably due to nutritional deficiencies during the eruption process.
- Fluorosis. Excessive fluoride accumulation in the enamel also causes white spots, and is common in countries with poorly controlled water fluoridation.
- Enamel decalcification. Another common case, especially in children, is a caries in its earliest stages.
How can we treat this stain on the teeth?
When this type of stain appears, it is usually the case that the surface of the enamel is intact in the vast majority of cases, but is irregularly formed in its less superficial layers. Therefore, as tooth enamel is a crystalline structure, a defect underneath the enamel causes light to reflect differently and a stain to appear.
This gives us an indication of how we might solve it.
Conventional treatment would consist of grinding away the affected enamel and placing a filling on top, but this is an invasive treatment, with permanent damage to the tooth.
We now have a much more conservative treatment available called ICON. This treatment is a resin infitration, or in other words, a liquid filling. In order for it to work we have to follow several steps consisting of the application of an acidic coating that temporarily generates pores in the enamel, so that the resin can access the malformed inner layer.
Once the resin fills in all the spaces, the tooth reflects light naturally again and the stain virtually disappears.