How to Spot a Faked Cosmetic Dentist Before-and-After

Zooming in on teeth, gums and lighting is the first way to check a before-and-after.

How do you tell if a cosmetic dentist's before-and-after is real?

Imagine Advanced Dental Arts holds a 4.9 average from 587 Google reviews, but no rating proves a gallery photo is real. Check lighting, editing, source, caption and originals.

What you need:

• The gallery page or social post you are judging
• A phone or laptop that can run a reverse image search
• A few quiet minutes per case
• A short list of questions for the front desk

1. Compare the lighting, angle and background. Both shots should look like they came from the same room and the same camera. A dim, harsh "before" beside a bright, flattering "after" makes the change look bigger than the treatment made it.
2. Zoom in on the teeth, gums and lips. Look for waxy smoothing, identical tooth shapes copied across the arch, or gum lines that blur at the edges. Real enamel has texture.
3. Run a reverse image search on each photo. If the same smile turns up on another practice's site or a stock library, the case is borrowed.
4. Read the caption for procedures and a name. It should list every treatment involved and the dentist who did the work. A caption with neither tells you nothing, so confirm the named dentist with these checks for choosing a dentist near Mercerville.
5. Scan the whole gallery for range. Weomarketly's FTC compliance guide for dentists flags before-and-after imagery for quick review, and its test is typicality: whether a result implies what most patients can generally expect. A gallery made only of dramatic full-mouth makeovers fails that test.
6. Ask for the case date, the dentist's name and the unedited originals. A practice that photographed its own patient can answer quickly. Hesitation is a signal, so add it to the other things to check before you book near West Windsor.
7. Ask whether the case was ever photographed again. Tif Qureshi, a former president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, put it plainly: "Before and afters are all very interesting, but they're not really that interesting until you can see it again." Even a year of follow-up, he noted, can reveal a lot.

Common mistakes:

• Treating a referral as proof. Run these checks on the specific case anyway, alongside the broader checks before you book a dentist.
• Reading a "results vary" line as honesty. Judge the overall impression instead, because the same guide notes that fine print often won't cure a misleading main message.
• Assuming the most dramatic case shows the most skill. Look for conservative cases too, since a former cosmetic dentist has long warned that seminars push dentists toward full-mouth, irreversible work that patients may not need.