Our practice can provide a wide range of dental services. We can typically provide every type of dental service without having to refer you to other specialties. This flexibility saves you time and keeps your total dental care within one practice.
Our practice places emphasis on total preventive care for our patients. Total care begins with regular hygiene visits, regular dental examinations and continued home oral health routines.
Our practice also provides the highest quality services for restoring mouths that have been damaged by dental disease and injury and common problems that require cosmetic dentistry.
A filling is one of the most common procedures a dentist performs. A filling is done to replace or rebuild a section of tooth that has been damaged by a cavity (decay) or breakage (fracture). The goal of filling a tooth (restoring a tooth) is to rebuild the missing part of the tooth and bring it back to its original shape and function.
Sillver amalgams – This is the dark colored or black filling you see in some back teeth. It is a mixture of silver and mercury and it tarnishes over time, turning very dark. Amalgams have been around for over 100 years. Its advantage is durability and ease of placement. It disadvantages:
It expands and contracts over its lifetime, often causing small fracture of the tooth around it over time.
It contains mercury which is controversial but no study has proven amalgam causes harm (See the American Dental Association Website www.ada.org on amalgams).
Its dark color turns the tooth dark.
Tooth colored fillings (composites) – Composites are a mixture of space age acrylic resin with strengthening particles of tooth colored quartz.
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Its advantages:
It is long lasting.
It can be perfectly matched to the natural tooth color.
It is moldable by the dentist to form any shape.
It is almost totally without after effect such as cold and hot sensitivity.
Because composites are bonded to the tooth structure they help rebuild the strength of the tooth. Due to this feature we see less fracture of the tooth over time.
Disadvantages:
Tooth colored fillings can show wear and tear after a number of years.
Tooth colored fillings are not designed to replace large missing portions or breaks of a tooth. This type of damage is better suited for repair by a crown, inlay or onlay. (See Crown, Onlays on this website)
Over time composites show staining deterioration and eventually have to be replaced.
If black fillings (amalgams) or tooth colored fillings (composites) lasted about the same amount of time, which one would you choose? Guess what, they do last about the same amount of time.
In our practice we will replace old, broken down amalgam fillings which contain traces of mercury and darken your teeth with white fillings (composites) to restore your smile and teeth to a more natural look and feel.
Extractions
The goal of dentistry as a profession and my personal mission as a dentist is to preserve my patient’s natural teeth in a healthy, beautiful condition throughout their lifetime. There are situations where removal of a tooth is unavoidable. Some of these situations are:
A tooth badly destroyed by dental decay to the point it cannot be salvaged.
Wisdom teeth that just do not have the proper room or position to come into the mouth properly.
The rare situation where we must remove a tooth or several teeth to make space to allow us to straighten other teeth.
When gum disease (periodontal disease) has weakened the bone around the tooth to the point we have no alternative but to remove the tooth.
If we must remove a tooth we take great pride in the fact that:
We can remove the majority of teeth without referring our patients to a specialist.
We accomplish this routinely with great care and gentle technique without causing discomfort.
We are able to accomplish this using very gentle use of local anesthetic. We do not use general anesthetic. The vast majority of our patients prefer and appreciate this and often mention the procedure was completely comfortable as compared to what they had imagined.
“I can’t believe it, I didn’t feel a thing.” - Ann B.
Sealants
The biting (chewing) surfaces of our back teeth have many grooves (fissures or valleys) and ridges (cusps) that easily trap food and plaque. For that reason the chewing surfaces on our back teeth are the most common areas of decay. Most adults have had these teeth filled, refilled and even crowned.
What if there was a way to prevent these cavities in the first place, at a young age? There is!
Sealants prevent the vast majority of these cavities from starting. Sealants are a thin coating of space age plastic material that flows into the grooves on the biting surface of the back teeth. A special light causes the sealant to lock in and harden, leaving a smooth barrier that keeps out plaque and food but leaves chewing unaffected.
The technique:
The biting surface is carefully cleaned of every speck of food, plaque and debris leaving the grooves spotlessly clean.
The grooves are “conditioned” to make the surface ready for the sealant to bond to the tooth.
A special light bonds and hardens the sealant to the tooth.
The bite is checked to make sure everything is okay.
We have helped thousands of teeth avoid the fate of developing cavities. I sealed my children’s teeth when they were very young and neither of them has had a cavity (more than 20 years later).
Sealants are most effective as soon as the permanent tooth is fully erupted through the gum (about 6-7 years of age). But as long as the tooth does not already have a cavity, it is never too late to seal the tooth.
A crown would be the solution to these problems. A crown is a replacement outer covering, not unlike a thimble, that fits over and strengthens a tooth and restores its appearance and function.
There are different types of crowns for different purposes. The most common type of crown is a porcelain crown with a metal interior for strength. These crowns are very strong and very closely reproduce the look of a natural tooth. The metal inside the crown is often an alloy of gold.
On the back teeth, or molars, especially where it is difficult to see, a gold crown is often the perfect choice because of its strength and durability (average durability is 20-40 year with good hygiene care).
Within the last decade all porcelain crowns have been developed that rival the crowns already mentioned for strength and staying power. But nothing can match this all porcelain crown in it ability to look like a beautiful natural tooth. Some of the all porcelain crown brand names are Empress, Lava, and Procera; all of which have breathtaking aesthetics and strength that rivals porcelain-metal crowns.
PROCEDURE
Shaping the tooth to remove the decay in or around it.
Re-sculpturing the tooth to provide an ideal fit for the crown.
Making an impression of your teeth in order to create a custom-made crown.
Making a temporary crown out of tooth colored resin and fitting it onto the tooth during the interim period when the permanent custom-made crown is being created.
Applying the permanent crown (when received from the lab) by removing the temporary crown and fitting the permanent one onto the tooth.
After ensuring that the crown has the proper look and fit, the dentist cements it into place.
Crowns can be expected to last for a number of years providing good oral hygiene and regular professional care, including brushing and flossing, are required to maintain healthy, bacteria-free teeth, gums and crowns. This helps in the prevention of gum disease and decay.
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ONLAYS
When a middle or back tooth (we call these premolars and molars) is damaged by dental decay or breakage we used to be faced with the decision of placing a filling or if the damge is more extensive, making a crown. But there are many situations where the damage to the tooth is in the medium category. We now have the technology to restore that tooth back to essentially brand new using a dental treatment called an inlay or an onlay.
Definitions:
INLAY: A porcelain replacement for a section of a tooth that is a bit too damaged for just a filling but does not require a full crown (cap).
ONLAY: A porcelain replacement for a section of a tooth that has been damaged to a point where one of the biting or chewing tips (cusp) requires strengthening or replacement.
Inlays and onlays are so lifelike and beautiful that another dentist or hygienist can miss the fact that a tooth has had that treatment. Very similar to a crown, an inlay or onlay is made by a dental technician during which time you will be wearing a temporary while the technician creates the inlay or onlay.
If a person is missing tooth in the front or back of the mouth a number of changes will occur (all bad) if that tooth is not replaced. The problems are:
The teeth next to the missing tooth tend to tip over (like the Titanic going down)
The tooth above or below the missing tooth that used to have a tooth to bite against now begins to move into the missing space.
Gaps begin to open between the teeth near the missing tooth
Food trapping, decay, periodontal disease, bad breath all follow in the wake of this missing tooth.
The solution is to have the missing tooth replaced. Some of the options available today to replace a missing tooth are:
A bridge is a good word for these dental appliances because not unlike a bridge crossing over a river by resting on 2 banks, the dental bridge is fitted to the tooth on either side of the missing tooth. These anchors teeth are slightly shaped to allow a crown to be placed over them. These two crowns are joined by a middle tooth which will replace the missing tooth.
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When the bridge is bonded or cemented into place the replacement tooth has the good looks and strength of the original tooth. I have placed hundreds of bridgess in my career and people have found them comfortable, very functional, very natural and aesthetic looking, to the point that they often forget that it is not their natural tooth.
