Dentistry Videos

Hello! My name is Dr. Peter Rinaldi and I’m a dentist here in Washington DC at the Washington Center for Dentistry. For the past 25 years, I spent a lot of my clinical chair time enhancing smiles. A lot of this has been done by altering tooth shape, color, and position. A lot of times, this is done with veneers. However, recently, there’s been a new cosmetic challenge in cosmetic dentistry that has nothing to do with teeth. It has to do with gums – Gum Pigmentation. Clinically, this is known as gingival hyperpigmentation. Many people ask: What causes gum pigmentation? The normal color of the gum tissue is pink. Gum pigmentation is caused by melanin and melanin is a natural substance in our body that we find in freckles, sun spots, age spots. It’s what makes us tan in the summertime. Unfortunately, some people have an overproduction of melanin in their gums. Discoloration may also be caused by long term use of certain medications. Now, gum pigmentation medically is not of any consequence. However, aesthetically, this could be a real challenge for some people. It makes them not want to smile at all. However, luckily, there are some things that we can do that can change that for these people and make them very happy.

Gum pigmentation is caused by melanin and melanin is a natural substance in our body that we find in freckles, sun spots, age spots. It’s what makes us tan in the summertime. Unfortunately, some people have an overproduction of melanin in their gums. Fortunately, there is something that can be done today. Its called gingival depigmentation or gum bleaching, and that’s just a fancy word for removal of those brown or black spots. Now, there are a lot of methods of gum bleaching that have been developed to do this. However, the preferred method in this office is to use a laser. Now, there’s a lot of different kinds of lasers, but we use a water lase. Now, a water lase is a laser that utilizes water, air, and laser energy to gently peel away the layers of the dark pigmentation. We love this method here in this office because there is zero discomfort during the procedure and minimal after. Now, there is some redness, raw redness right after the gum bleaching procedure. But, within four days to a week, that heals up and the results are just beautiful pink gums. Afterwards, little discomfort, Advil, Mortin, or Tylenol is all that’s needed and most people find out that its quite an easy procedure.

Gum pigmentation is caused by melanin and melanin is a natural substance in our body that we find in freckles, sun spots, age spots. It’s what makes us tan in the summertime. Unfortunately, some people have an overproduction of melanin in their gums. There are a lot of methods of gum bleaching, however, the preferred method in this office is to use a laser. Now, there’s a lot of different kinds of lasers, but we use a water lase. Now, a water lase is a laser that utilizes water, air, and laser energy to gently peel away the layers of the dark pigmentation. We love this method here in this office because there is zero discomfort during the procedure and minimal after. One of the main questions that patients ask is: How much gum bleaching should I do? Well, just like smile design, it depends on how far the smile goes from corner to corner of the mouth when a patient has full closure. It also is dependent upon lip mobility which means how high the lip rises when people smile and everybody is different. Some people have a low lip line, some people have a high lip line that is also a factor when we consider how much of the black or the brown to remove. Now, this gum bleaching procedure takes approximately 45 to 60 minutes for one arch. Most people opt to do just the upper arch. As I said before, there is some raw redness for the first four days to a week. However, that disappears quite rapidly and beautiful pink gums appear. Most patients only need Advil or Motrin or Tylenol for the first 24 to 48 hours and they feel great afterwards

Gum pigmentation is caused by melanin and melanin is a natural substance in our body that we find in freckles, sun spots, age spots. It’s what makes us tan in the summertime. Unfortunately, some people have an overproduction of melanin in their gums. There are a lot of methods of gum bleaching, however, the preferred method in this office is to use a laser. Now, there’s a lot of different kinds of lasers, but we use a water lase. Now, a water lase is a laser that utilizes water, air, and laser energy to gently peel away the layers of the dark pigmentation. We love this method here in this office because there is zero discomfort during the procedure and minimal after. Another question that patients ask is: “How long does gum bleaching last?” Well, let’s remember that this is caused by melanin and melanin occurs naturally in our body. So, the black or brown pigmentation is really always occurring in our body. With the laser, we’re just removing – layer by layer – the dark pigments that we see. Therefore, we all produce melanin at a different time schedule. Recurrence will be different for everybody. We’re expecting though about one and a half to three years though. Retreatment is fine. It doesn’t hurt to go back in again to do the procedure. However, exciting things are happening on the horizon because they are trying to develop methods to actually inhibit melanin formation in our body which would then stop it from coming back forever.