Lake Forest Dentistry

by Jill Cousins

A smile can light up a room, as the saying goes, but sometimes our smiles are not quite as big, bright, and beautiful as they could be. At Lake Forest Dentistry in Sanford, Dr. Dennis Horanic offers several simple and painless options so you can build a bigger smile.

For example, some patients have what Dr. Horanic calls a “gummy smile,” with gums that appear to be too prominent and teeth that appear to be too small. The fix is actually quite easy. A gummy smile can be genetic, but sometimes it can be caused by the teeth wearing down over time.

“We use micro lasers to go in there and trim the tissue back,” says Dr. Horanic, who opened his Lake Forest practice in 1998. “The tooth is being hidden by the gums, and the quick and easy way to fix that is we go in with a little laser, and about a half hour later, you walk out of the office and you’re done. The patient can see all their teeth for the first time. It’s very comfortable. There are no sutures or bleeding involved.”

The laser procedure can be performed on children as well as adults. It takes just about 30 minutes, and patients experience no postoperative pain. But it wasn’t always that way.

“In the old days, if you tried to fix a gummy smile, you’d have to cut somebody’s mouth from side to side and put probably 15 sutures in there,” says Dr. Horanic. “Then you would be swollen for about two weeks. After that experience, they probably wouldn’t do it again.”

Now, Dr. Horanic can use his laser almost like a magic wand, transforming smiles as a magician would. Abracadabra!

“A lot of the formerly difficult things that we do are now easy,” says Dr. Horanic, who spent six years as one of the dentists for the University of Central Florida’s athletic teams before opening his private practice. “The wonderful part of dentistry is to see the before and after and to see people who are thrilled with the ‘after.’”