A Hawaii and Los Angeles-trained Filipino dentist has brought the US cosmetic dental technology to the Philippines and is now spreading its health benefits and restoring the youth and self-confidence of her many patients, both local and foreign.
Dr. Cecile Infantado does it in her clinic at the third floor of Dusit Hotel Nikko at the Ayala Center in Makati City, where people with various unsightly dental problems come for treatment.
Such problems, according to Infantado, include chipped tooth, cracked or discolored enamel, uneven length of incisors, edge-to-edge bite, ugly fillings, gaps or big spaces in between teeth, old and leaking crowns, and even teeth that have shortened due to wear and tear over the years.
“These dental disfigurement can have devastating effect on health, appearance, personality and self-esteem, especially in such inevitable cases as the shortening and darkening of the teeth as we age. The gradual shortening of the teeth eventually makes a person lose the vertical height of the lower third of her face, making her look a lot older than her age. The darkening of the teeth has the same unpleasant and undesirable effect,” Infantado explains.
Surprisingly, the corrective and restoration procedures don’t take as long as the usual dental treatments patients go through in ordinary clinics, thanks to the so-called Computer Aided Design (CAD) and the Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), both in-office systems that enable esthetic and long-lasting restorations to be completed in a single appointment.
CAD and CAM ensure the natural and life-like appearance of the restored and improved teeth. With such technologies, Infantado is able to carve a natural-looking dental restoration, giving emphasis on cusps, lobes, depressions and the rest of the teeth’s anatomy.
“Cosmetic dentistry highlights the finer details and life-like appearance of tooth restorations. For example, our tooth by nature is polychromatic in color. Thus, cosmetic dentistry uses different shades of dental composite to simulate the natural color gradient of a tooth, including its hue, transparency and opaqueness,” she explains.
As such, Infantado can do a total dental makeover involving veneers, crowns, inlays and onlays.
Aside from general dentistry and orthodontics, her clinic’s wide range of services include bleaching or tooth whitening, bonding, cosmetic contouring, gum sculpture, tooth colored fillings, and even a so-called “Smile Design.”
Veneers restore the length of the teeth and face, thus improving the tone of facial muscles and skin and making the patient look many years younger. Veneers also avoid long, expensive and grueling orthodontic treatments.
On the other hand, Infantado introduces the use of durable metal-free porcelain crowns that improve the health of gums while giving teeth a natural look and feel.
And through state-of-the-art cosmetic bonding, Infantado closes the gaps or wide spaces in between teeth, recontours the uneven length of incisors, and replaces unsightly silver fillings with tooth-colored inlays.
Infantado acquired her expertise in Hawaii and later in the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). She is a member of the American Academy of Esthetic Dentistry. Among its members, she is the only one practicing in the Philippines.