Brown/yellow discoloured bands are commonly seen in patients who have had fixed braces previously.
Options for improving the brown/yellow discoloured bands:
- Teeth whitening with in-office (for example, ZOOM) or take-home whitening systems.
- ICON resin infiltration of the discoloured areas (which are more porous than the surrounding tooth structure). This works well alone only for shallow lesions which can be assessed clinically. Deep lesions will usually require microabrasion of the enamel to get to the deeper layers.
- Veneers. This will require trimming of the tooth to be able to mask the discolouration.
I will normally start my patients with the least invasive option (whitening) before moving down the scale to more invasive treatments, depending on the response to treatment.
The chipped and worn edges of the teeth can be repaired with composite (the least invasive, fastest but most high maintenance option) or if veneers have been chosen, this will mask the discolouration and fill in the missing areas simultaneously.
