What To Do If Your Teeth Look Longer After Beating Gum Disease

Gum disease is a serious condition that often requires the assistance of a dentist to fix. If you've had severe gum disease and are confused because your teeth look as though they've grown bigger, then rest assured that no change has happened to your teeth themselves. However, your gums may have changed. Read on to discover the changes that can occur due to gum disease and what you can do to have it fixed.

Symptoms of Severe Gum Disease

As you no doubt know, there are a lot of symptoms associated with severe gum disease, like bleeding from the gums, pain, and sometimes even the production of pus. However, the real symptom that's causing a problem for you now is called gum recession.

Receded gums are sometimes temporary, but in cases of severe gum disease, they aren't. Receding gums just means that the gums have essentially shrunken due to gum disease. This is because some of the tissue was so badly damaged that it was broken down and lost, and the gums became shorter as a result. Unfortunately, there's no guaranteed way to avoid having this happen shy of avoiding getting gum disease in the first place.

Fixing the Problem

The good thing is that while there isn't a way to avoid this problem, there is a way to have it fixed.

Dentists can fix receding gums by performing a procedure called a gum graft. This is kind of like a tissue graft but specifically targets the gums.

With a gum graft, your dentist will either use a tissue donor or will take a bit of tissue from the roof of your mouth to make the gum graft. Once they've removed the tissue, by utilizing the scans and photographs they've taken of your mouth, they'll carefully cut and reshape the tissue to match your gums. Then, the tissue will be surgically implanted to the end of your gums. Keep in mind that this may require multiple procedures if both your upper and lower gums have receded as you'll need time to recover before more tissue can be taken.

After a while, the new tissue and the gums will merge as the body heals and fuses them together. Once you reach this point, no one should be able to tell that you had a gum graft, nor that your gums had ever receded.

Gum disease can, unfortunately, have a lasting impact on people even after beating it. If you're tired of having your teeth and gums look odd, then get in touch with a dentist to do what you can to get it fixed. Look for a family dentist near you for more information. 


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