What You Should Know About Treatment Plans for Shovel-Shaped Teeth

Have you experienced a patient who has a shovel-shaped tooth? It’s not impossible to come across cases where the tooth features lingual marginal ridges, resulting in a shape similar to shovels. But how do you formulate a treatment plan for these patients, and do you need to take any particular steps to treat a shovel-shaped tooth?
How Should a Treatment Plan Look for Shovel-Shaped Teeth?
If you’re developing a treatment plan for shovel-shaped teeth, it’s important to consider how these could impact your orthodontics approach. Notably, in the majority of cases, shovel-shaped teeth won’t need a vastly different treatment plan than regular teeth, so this is well worth keeping in mind as part of your decision.
However, it is worth considering that shovel-shaped teeth may have a small impact on overjet cases. Indeed, there will likely be some more overjet (by several mm) around the shovel-shaped teeth than the others.
Failing this, if the patient isn’t satisfied with the results you can offer, you may want to consider mentioning crowns to see if that might be of interest to them.
Don’t Promise the Impossible
Generally speaking, shovel-shaped teeth will have very similar treatment plans to regular teeth. However, when discussing the orthodontics treatment plan with your patient, consider carefully how the tooth’s shape will impact the final results you will be able to deliver. Failing this, you could end up with dissatisfied clients who aren’t happy with the final results of their treatment – especially for overjet cases.