Patient Perspective: Teeth whitening

“I love teeth,” Sarah Wyssmann readily admits. “I am a teeth fanatic. I love to take care of my teeth-brushing, flossing.”

As much as she valued oral health, there was always something about Sarah’s smile that held her back: white spots. The white, chalky marks on six of her front teeth seemed, at various times, to be more or less significant, “but it was always a self conscious thing for me,” Sarah admits.

For years, she’d asked her dentist and friends in the dental profession what could be done to fix the problem. Veneers seemed like too drastic a solution, so “perpetual whitening,” as Sarah puts it, became the Band-Aid®.

Eventually, Sarah stopped asking her dentist and friends what to do. After years of whitening treatments she stumbled upon recommendations for a remineralization paste. Armed with new information, she called her dentist.

The patient’s perspective
“Our dentist, Dr. Steve Irwin, is an amazing dentist and extremely skilled. A great guy with a big heart,” Sarah said. “I called to tell him what I’d read about this remineralization paste and to see if he could do something.”

The timing was right. While Dr. Irwin didn’t respond with that particular product she’d researched, he had discovered DMG America’s ICON, and based on results with other patients, thought it could be the solution Sarah was looking for.

After conversations about cost and managing expectations, Sarah made her appointment. Her enthusiasm speaks for itself:

“It was one of the top 10 days of my life. It was the same feeling I’d experienced when I first had my braces off-it was like my teeth, dimensionally, were different. This simple 45-minute process, that was completely painless, took the white marks away almost completely. My teeth were fluid in color; they looked smooth, like glass. It took me several days to come down from the high and excitement of it.”

How can this be kept a secret?
The only other thing more unbelievable to Sarah than the transformation of her smile was the fact that more dentists aren’t out there offering this procedure. Now, when she sees other people with white marks on their teeth, she wants to tell them it doesn’t have to be that way-but she doesn’t want to seem judgemental or rude.

“But it is OK for a dentist, professionally, to bring it up when that patient is in the chair. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t,” she said.

In the meantime, she is glad that she had Dr. Irwin as a dentist and family friend. She absolutely would have recommended him before, but her ICON transformation just sealed the deal.