Ways to Make Your Dental Veneers Last Longer

Dental veneers continue to make an impact on people, as they change the way we view tooth decay, discoloration, and damage. Veneers give you the option of having a replacement to the enamel that causes you to look less attractive, and do so as a long term solution. Dental veneers are cemented into place using dental cement after the worn out enamel has been removed. Since they are a more permanent solution, the natural question becomes, “how long do dental veneers last?” The answer to this question has both a simple answer and a more complicated one. From a simple perspective, typically, it is safe to say that dental veneers will last you around 10 years, as long as you take care of them. There are numerous factors that can cause veneers to last much less than that, but 10 years is a good rule of thumb. Recently, there have been a number of studies conducted to answer this exact question with some precision. What one of the studies found was that dental veneers patients can reasonably expect their veneers to last anywhere from five to 13 years with no significant problems. In the controlled group, 96 percent of the participants reported that their veneers lasted at least five to six years. This group was overlapped by a second group who found their veneers lasted at least between 10 and 11 years, and even a third group of 91 percent of the participants found their veneers lasted at least between 12 and 13 years. What this showed is that there is a 91 percent chance your veneers will last 13 years or more with the proper care. After 13 years, the next group was 71 percent, still a substantial number, who found their veneers lasted at least between 15 and 16 years.

As you consider dental veneers, and if you have questions about the longevity of the devices, the one thing we will tell you is that how long they last has a lot to do with you. Taking care of your teeth and making sure you are engaging in proper oral hygiene habits will go far toward ensuring that your dental veneers will last for a very long time. People do some unfortunate things with their teeth, like opening bags of chips, instead of using the right tools. These kinds of actions can damage your teeth and greatly reduce the life cycle of your dental veneers. Study after study has shown that the most common reason why veneers fail is because they get fractured. In fact, over 45 percent of failures with veneers have occurred because of a fracture, while an additional 28 percent happened because of a crack. This shows a direct correlation between physical trauma to your teeth and the loss of a veneer.

Oral hygiene plays another important part in the sustaining of dental veneers. An unhealthy mouth cannot sustain the porcelain. Without good oral hygiene, you can greatly reduce the longevity of your dental veneers and also lose additional teeth.