Aesthetic Evaluation for Smile
Design
We have posted a form
that you may wish to use in your aesthetic dental practice. When you deal
with aesthetic dentistry, an important ingredient in the smile design is
the image the patient wishes to project. Someone who wants to appear
young, bold, and sexy, needs a completely different smile design from
someone who wishes to appear mature, wise, and deliberate.
The aesthetic evaluation form is a form that
patients can use to communicate their desires to the aesthetic dentist.
The form, if properly filled out, will help you assess what we call the
"image aspirations" of the patient.
On the aesthetic evaluation form, you will
see a continuum from 1 to 10 for each image parameter. Some have remarked
that the extremes on each end of the continuum are not direct opposites of
each other. For example, the patient is asked to choose where they fall
between the choices of warm and sophisticated. While the adjectives are
not opposites of each other, they are competing qualities, and the
resulting smile design will be very different, depending on which quality
is more important to them to portray.
If a patient wishes to appear warm, bold,
and young, the resulting smile design will emphasize the central incisors,
and the centrals may be considerably longer and more prominent than the
other anterior teeth. If a patient wishes to appear sophisticated,
conservative, and mature, the smile design will feature even lengths of
all the teeth. For different mixtures of qualities, smiles designs
somewhere between the above extremes should be chosen.
You'll also note on the color continuum,
that the choices range from white to natural. We haven't found that any
patients want a tooth color that is darker than natural. By natural we
mean a color that is white, but is within the range of tooth shades that
people are born with. On the "white" extreme of the continuum, we mean a
color that is artificially white. Some people want their teeth to blind
other people on the other side of the room. Some want a color that is more
subdued. Again, this is an excellent communication tool for dealing with
the issue of color with patients.
The aesthetic evaluation form also
accomplishes a couple of other objectives.
One objective accomplished by the aesthetic
evaluation form is to open a dialog with the patient on the smile design.
An extremely important element of aesthetic dentistry is excellent
communication with the patient so that the smile design can be customized
to the patient. The bottom of the form asks patients to choose a celebrity
smile that appeals to them. Often, however, the smile that appeals to the
patient aesthetically will be at odds with that patient's image
aspirations. As an aesthetically sensitive dentist, you can then discuss
with the patient what is important to them, make your recommendations, get
feedback from the patient, and end up with an aesthetically informed
patient who knows what he or she wants and why he or she wants it.
A second objective accomplished by the
aesthetic evaluation form is that it lets the patient know that you
understand aesthetics, that you are customizing the smile design to the
patient, and that you are sensitive to the patient's personality and
needs. Use of the form can aid in building a strong bond of confidence
with the patient.
Click here to download the aesthetic evaluation form.
To find books about this aesthetic dentistry,
click
here.
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