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As professionals we do not take your fear of dentists personally. We understand that almost all of you have had a bad experience at least once in your life. This is not because dentists are mean people who want to hurt you. Rather, it is because the mouth is one of the most sensitive parts of the body, and some general dentistry practices involve procedures that are uncomfortable and sometimes painful. Most people who fear dentists develop these fears in childhood after going once or twice for fillings and cleaning and reacting as all children do to pain—with avoidance.
Because we work with so many children, and because we remember being children ourselves, we have developed a series of strategies to alleviate fear of dentists in young and old alike. We know that a great deal of fear is simply fear of the unknown. We make it a point to curb this fear immediately by providing our patients with as much knowledge as possible. When a new patient comes to us, we conduct a complete dental examination and explain in layman’s terms the problems that we find. We have found that the more details we explain about a problem, the more we demythologize it and deflate the fear factor attached to it.
Along with an informed explanation of the problem comes an informed awareness of the options at hand which we can apply to remedy the problem. We can almost always provide each patient with several types of treatment. Not everyone wants a Cadillac solution—and not everyone can afford one either. We strive to find something that will work for everyone. When people feel they have a choice in their dental treatment, we find that much of their fear of dentists subsides simply because they now feel empowered to make decisions for themselves.
We also find that people tend to lose their fear of dentists as soon as they become more comfortable with our office. We organize dental records, X-rays, photos, and insurance documents so they can always be conveniently accessed and discussed. Our staff is friendly and helpful, and we work hard to always provide bedside manner to our patients.
Once patients get into the routine of treatment at our center, we find that they lose a lot of their fears of the dentist simply on the basis of familiarity. We have often seen as well a reluctance to go to a specialist once a patient becomes familiar with our practice. They get into a comfort zone with our staff that feels difficult for them to move away from. Patients typically want us to administer the treatments we recommend because of our approach to cosmetic dentistry and because of the advanced methods we use to minimize pain and discomfort. This is one of the reasons we are so broad in our scope of services—we want to provide both general dentistry care and cosmetic dentistry care to our community.
For people who simply cannot get past their fear of the dentist no matter how comfortable we make the environment or the procedure, we offer sedation dentistry services. We can have an anesthesiologist come to our office 2-3 times per month to perform IV sedation on patients. For milder cases, we can also administer sedation through oral means to relax and comfort the patient during treatment.
We urge patients who have been procrastinating dental care to seek treatment as soon as possible. The quicker we can pinpoint a problem and come up with a plan of action, the cheaper and more comfortable the treatment options will be. Labels: cosmetic braces, fear of dentists, general dentistry
Cosmetic Dentistry
Cosmetic Dentists are general dentistry experts who extend that expertise into aesthetics. Cosmetic dentistry is not a separate from general dentistry, but is a grouping of sub-sciences within it. Our dental professionals have years of experience and continuing education in both health and wellness services and full mouth restorative services.
Implants
Implants rank among the most important forms of general dentistry. Implants involve the use of crowns, but they are much more than crowns. An implant is an artificial titanium tooth root implanted in the jawbone itself. A porcelain crown placed over the tooth appears identical to surrounding natural teeth and provides a stable, hard, reliable chewing surface that will not chip or break while you are eating normal food.
Laser Periodontal Treatment (LANAP)
LANAP is periodontal surgery (surgery on the gums) that uses a special laser to replace the metal cutting tools traditionally used in general dentistry. You will experience the same benefits as the standard surgical methods, but with much bleeding pain. Recovery time from LANAP is also much quicker.
Sleep Apnea Management
Obstructive sleep apnea is very serious and can cause anything from restlessness to chronic fatigue the following day. Sleep apnea is normally treated with CPAP therapy, which uses a machine to keep air passages open while the patient sleeps. Many people try CPAP and give it up on the basis that it causes them too much discomfort or awareness. This is where general dentistry, surprisingly, can actually step in and provide alternatives.
The FDA has approved a number of sleep apnea oral appliances. These devices are like mouth guards, only much more sophisticated. The dentist has to select the type that is best for your mouth, and in most cases, further customize the model to your particular teeth and bite.
When correctly manufactured and fitted, dental appliances have proven to be equally effective to CPAP in treating all but the most severe forms of sleep apnea.
Fillings
Using fillings to repair cavities in teeth is common in both general dentistry and cosmetic dentistry. The difference lies in the nature of the fillings themselves. In general practices, amalgam fillings have historically been used that are made by mixing silver and mercury. They are not the healthiest things to have in your mouth, and they will often fall out after several years and require replacement.
We prefer to use composite dental resin instead of silver-mercury fillings. Composite resin is customized to look like the color of your natural teeth and is made from bio-friendly resin. It is healthier and last longer than other types of fillings, and it creates a much better cosmetic appearance.
We use porcelain inlays and onlays to fill teeth when the area that needs to be covered is more than 40%-50% of the biting area.
Crowns
Before the development of titanium dental implants, crowns were used to cover teeth that could not be repaired by fillings. Crowns were made of gold and were often known as “caps.” Crowns are now mostly made from porcelain, which is used equally in both general dentistry and cosmetic dentistry to cover teeth that have been severely cracked, chipped, or fractured.
IV Sedation
General dentistry practices might involve working on the teeth in a way that the patient finds uncomfortable. IV sedation delivers anesthetics to the body so the patient will feel no pain during the procedure. Lucidity is maintained in a very relaxed state, but is monitored by an anesthesiologist.
We would like to point out that in many cases the general and the cosmetic can go hand in hand to create a win-win situation for both health and physical appearance.Labels: cosmetic dental crowns, cosmetic dentistry, general dentistry, houston dental office, houston general dentistry
Dentistry and gum disease go hand and hand back to the beginnings of recorded history. Both Hippocrates and Aristotle wrote about Periodontis in their writings. They recommended certain painless remedies for it, such as ointments, and also mentioned some rather harsh and painful remedies, like the use of a hot wire laid across the gums to sterilize them. During the Middle Ages, gum disease treatments were similarly crude and barbaric, inflicting more discomfort than true healing on the patient.
In the 1800s Dentistry began to advance, yet gum disease treatments still remained primitive by comparison. Many dentists would try to prevent it by cleaning teeth with scrapers or by fixing cavities with oddly-shaped and painful dental tools.
20th-century dentistry treated advanced stages of gum disease by cutting away diseased tissue and grafting healthy tissue in its place. Other method involved removing bacteria from tooth surfaces through the practices of root scaling and planing. It has been proven that a cleaner tooth surface will result in more healthy gums surrounding that tooth.
Twentieth-century general dentistry typically treated gum disease with several types of surgery. One type of surgery was cutting away the diseased portion of the gum and grafting healthy tissue in its place. Another solution used by general dentistry to treat gum disease is root scaling and planing. This involves removing bacteria from the surfaces of teeth that touch the interior of the gums. Creating a more healthy tooth surface contributes to the healing of the gums themselves.
Today, gum removal is more a function of cosmetics than periodontal treatment. It helps make excessively large gums look more proportional to the teeth. In terms of medical treatment for both moderate and advanced Periodontitis, LANAP has proven to be the most effective.
LANAP is done with a sophisticated ND: YAG laser called a PerioLase® MVP-7 that emits an infrared beam that removes diseased tissue and sterilizes gums in the process. An ultrasonic scalar and other very unique hand instruments are then used to remove root surface tartar. This makes LANAP the least invasive of all dental treatments for gum disease, and also the least painful.
Laser Periodontal TherapyGum Disease CureGingivitis TreatmentGum Disease SymptomsThe Cosmetic Dentistry Center specializes in all kinds of dentistry and focuses on making patients both look better and feel better. If you have bleeding gums, or feel soreness around your teeth, call toll free 1-888-790-0309 to schedule an appointment. Gum disease caught early is much easier to treat and alleviate than the more advanced stages of Periodontitis.Labels: general dentistry, Gum Disease, LANAP, laser periodontal therapy
Dental fillings are some of the most common treatments used in general dentistry.
If left to itself, tooth decay can destroy a whole tooth. Generally, a dentist will fill the tooth when 50 percent of it has been destroyed. Traditionally, silver-mercury amalgam fillings were used for this purpose, but this practice is rapidly declining. This is because silver-mercury amalgams are made from metal, and any kind of metal will expand and contract when exposed to extremes of heat or cold. This in turn puts a strain on the tooth that carries the filling, and the tooth can either crack from this strain, or become infected by bacteria that enter under the filling.
It is becoming more and more of a general consensus throughout all dental specialties that there are much better materials for filling teeth. Composite materials made from certain types of resin, for example, can now be custom-made to mimic the teeth, or they can be made to whiten the teeth.ort and strength. Whereas a filling will weaken a tooth over a period of time by as much as 50 percent, a composite filling made from resin or porcelain can actually strengthen a tooth up to 75 percent.
There are also a number of treatments that can now replace the old silver-mercury amalgams previously used in general dentistry.
Dental Crowns
Dental crowns act like caps over teeth. This is why they are sometimes called caps. Crowning a cracked tooth keeps it from fracturing completely, because it actually creates an entirely new surface area for an entirely new surface area for the tooth. Crowns in the past were sometimes made of gold. Gold is soft and clashes with the color of natural teeth. Cosmetic Dentists these days use exclusively porcelain dental crowns. This is because porcelain is very hard and nonporous, and also because porcelain mimics the translucence of natural tooth enamel.
Porcelain crowns are formed in a mold of the individual teeth of the patient, and frequently look better than the original teeth when they are installed.
Cosmetic Dental Inlays and Onlays
Like dental crowns, inlays are made from porcelain. However, they do not cover the entire tooth surface, but instead fit over the cusp (tip) of the tooth. Dentists use porcelain that is colored to mimic the existing color of teeth so the inlays will go unnoticed. To give the best possible fit, the dentist creates a temporary inlay, and then takes an impression which is used to cast the permanent, porcelain inlay. The dentist bonds it to the tooth and polishes it to create a cosmetic, natural, and healthy-looking appearance.
Onlays resemble inlays, but they are used for more substantial reconstructions. Often onlays are used to repair the damaged portion of a tooth in lieu of capping the tooth with a crown.
Root canals
General dentistry practices have long relied upon the root canal as the best strategy for saving a tooth that is badly infected and whose root is dying. In the inner pulp of a tooth, all the blood vessel canals and nerves connect to the root. If this area becomes infected, the root and surrounding tissue begins to die, General dentists long ago realized that removing diseased pulp and thorough disinfection of the pulp chamber and the canals that connect it to the bloodstream and nervous system.
Even the tooth is technically dead, its normal chewing function and cosmetic appearance can be saved through this procedure. This practice is used in both cosmetic and general dentistry in order to avoid tooth extraction.
Although general dentistry abound throughout Houston and all of Texas, why not get these procedures done here at the Cosmetic Dentistry Center in the Medical Center? Not only will you get fantastic medical care, but a more attractive smile at the end of the day.
Even better, the sophisticated technology we use for many otherwise very painful general dentistry procedures (such as periodontal treatments) makes treatment here much more relaxed and painless.Labels: cosmetic dentistry, dental crowns, dental inlays, dental onlays, general dentistry, periodontal surgery, periodontal treatment, root canals
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