4 Dental Procedures to Fix Your Smile

Never underestimate the importance of an attractive, healthy smile. Cosmetic problems chip away at your confidence, functional ones erode your comfort, and most people are carrying a little of both. The encouraging news: nearly every common smile complaint maps to a proven procedure, and matching your problem to the right one is most of the battle.

A completed smile transformation from our practice. See the full case

At Elite Prosthetic Dentistry, Dr. Gerald Marlin and our team are problem solvers by reputation: we listen, examine thoroughly, and then present the options that actually fit your situation. Here are the four procedures that fix the problems we see most.

1. Replace Missing Teeth With Implants

Missing teeth are both a cosmetic and a functional problem. The gap is what you see; what you do not see is the jawbone beneath it beginning to shrink, the bite shifting, and the remaining teeth absorbing stress they were not designed for. Left unaddressed, missing teeth can contribute to:

• Difficulty or discomfort while chewing
• Changes to your bite and jaw alignment
• Joint and muscle pain
• Overload and sensitivity in the remaining teeth

In most cases, a dental implant is the best replacement: anchored in the jawbone, it preserves the bone while providing a permanent, stable base for a natural-looking restoration. Dr. Marlin has placed and restored more than 3,900 implants over a 40+ year career, so the surgical and restorative sides of your case stay in one experienced set of hands, and the decision to use an implant is always driven by your tooth’s actual prognosis, never by default.

2. Cover Imperfections With Veneers

If your teeth are healthy but you hold back from photos and open laughter, the issue is usually surface-level, and surface-level is exactly what porcelain veneers fix. These thin ceramic shells bond to the front of the teeth, tailored to match your surrounding tooth color and mimic real enamel. They are the tool of choice for teeth that are misshapen, slightly crooked, gapped, worn, chipped, or discolored, the full list we explore in four ways veneers improve a smile.

A consultation at our Washington, DC practice

3. Protect and Strengthen Damaged Teeth With Crowns

Some problems threaten the tooth itself: deep decay, large old fillings, fractures, severe grinding wear, or discoloration too dark for a veneer to mask, such as tetracycline staining. Here the answer is a dental crown, which covers the entire visible tooth to protect it, restore its shape and size, complete an implant, anchor a bridge, or strengthen a tooth after root canal treatment.

We craft our crowns on-site in our in-house laboratory, which is how we control their aesthetics, fit, and strength; with proper care, our crowns have lasted 35 years and more. One patient with extensive grinding wear was deeply self-conscious about her smile; with her new custom temporary crowns she had an immediate smile makeover and, in her words, “couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”

The immediate smile makeover described above, from a completed case in our practice. See the full case

4. Alleviate Jaw Pain With Bite Alignment and Trigger Point Therapy

The fourth fix is for a problem many people never connect to their dentist: chronic jaw pain. When the cause is TMJ dysfunction from a misaligned bite, symptoms can radiate well beyond the jaw: clicking or popping, pain near the joints, trouble opening and closing, facial pain, ear pain or ringing, and chronic headaches.

Treatment starts with a thorough examination of your bite and the surrounding muscles. Precise adjustments can improve how the teeth meet; where more is needed, a night guard or trigger point therapy enters the plan. Dr. Marlin is unusually qualified here, having written his master’s thesis on the subject during prosthodontic specialty training and trained with Dr. Janet Travell, a pioneering expert in myofascial pain treatment using trigger point injection and massage.

Match Your Problem to Its Fix

Whether your concern is one tooth or your whole smile, the path is the same: an honest diagnosis, then the least treatment that genuinely solves it, chosen from a menu we detail further in our guide to treatable conditions that undermine smiles. Call 202-244-2101 or schedule a consultation at Elite Prosthetic Dentistry, near the Friendship Heights Metro station in Washington, DC. We welcome patients from DC, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Arlington, and those who travel to us from out of state and abroad.