After a 2 month long ordeal with getting my lumineers and then having them redone due to pain and the color from one Lumineer to the next being greatly different, I was flossing as directed last Friday and the top of one lumineer cracked off. Then today, having my Mother’s Day lunch, Another Lumineer cracked into four pieces! There is a jagged piece still attached. I hate Lumineers and going back every 2 weeks to get them changed or fixed or redone. Also I can’t find any info on the better business bureau.
– Vanessa in Texas

Vanessa,
There are a lot of stories going around about problems with Lumineers. But the problem really isn’t usually with the material, but usually in the placing of the Lumineers. With their heavy promotion, where they talk about how easy they are to do, they are attracting a lot of dentists who aren’t thoroughly trained in cosmetic dentistry. They dentists have been to the two-day Lumineers course, but they need several years of going to extra courses to really be good at cosmetic dentistry.

Manipulating color is where most general dentists have the most trouble. You found that when you got your first set, because you said that at first the color was different from one tooth to another. To be lifelike, the porcelain needs to have some translucency, so the color of the underlying tooth strongly affects the final color. It takes considerable training and experience to know how to manipulate this color well.

Then when they began to crack and fall off, this is most likely due to a problem in the bonding technique. Lumineers and other brands of porcelain veneers get their strength from the strength of the bond to the tooth.

My advice is to keep with this dentist until he or she gets it right. It seems like the dentist got in over his or her head. They got the advertisements from the Lumineers people that made this all seem so easy, and they’re learning the hard way that it isn’t so easy.

One of the best ways to be sure that your cosmetic dentist knows what he or she is doing is to find one who is accredited by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, like Dr. Malone is. It’s a three-year process to become accredited, and the dentist has to pass a stringent series of examinations, including a review of the dentist’s actual work by a panel of examiners. You can’t get through that without a thorough understanding of cosmetic dentistry.

Related information:
Read about Dr. Mike Malone and his credentials