Comfortable Dental Care
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Office News
Our goal is to develop a strong partnership with every patient. When you understand the importance of your dental health, we can help you maintain a healthy mouth, as well as treat the causes and symptoms of any dental condition.
We invite you to read our latest SmileLink newsletter and to check out our website often for new information, or contact our office with any questions or concerns. Working together, we can help you achieve a lifetime of healthy and attractive teeth and gums.
Featured Article |
SmileLink Articles |
Your Best Smile is Here
It's going to be so nice to see your dazzling smiling again! You looked pretty gloomy when we found that you had an old filling that needed to be replaced. We decided that an indirect onlay would be the best restoration for you. "Indirect" simply meant that the restoration was made in a laboratory rather than in our office. After we remove the old, worn out filling and prepare the tooth for the new restoration, we first give you a temporary restoration. It takes a few days to get the impression to the lab and then get back the permanent restoration.
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Feel Good with Beautiful Teeth
Believe it or not, we get as excited as you do when you see how much your smile can be improved with some minor, subtle changes. They may be subtle, but what a remarkable difference they will make. With the materials and techniques available in today's technology, we can do absolute wonders for your smile. You might have a gap between your teeth, or your teeth are not as white as you would like them to be. Perhaps you have one tooth that is longer than the other. No problem. For a gap, we could place veneers.
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Finding Dental Financial Help
You might know people who freeze in place because they can't locate something they desperately need. They feel like they are trying to find the needle in the haystack, and you don't know how to help. If the search was for a pair of brown shoes, that would not be such a crisis. But because we are talking about finding dental care for people who are economically-disadvantaged, it is significant. Maintaining optimal oral health is vital to everyone's overall health, not just dental health. It might be dental care for a child who is at high risk for developing tooth decay, but whose parents do not have the financial means to seek treatment. Maybe it is a low-income senior who is in critical need of general dental care but must buy food and life-sustaining medications instead.
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Save Space for Teeth
Remember in grade school when you were late getting to the cafeteria and your friend saved you a place in line? If she had not, other students would have moved into "your" place and there would not have been any room for you. It is the same situation when your youngster loses a primary tooth before the permanent tooth has erupted. Your youngster's bones are growing, and as they grow, teeth shift in the jawbone. If there is an empty space between two teeth, a neighboring tooth can move into it, just like students moved into "your" space in the cafeteria line. Early loss of a primary tooth is a common occurrence, and reserving space for that permanent tooth is extremely important.
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Baby Teeth Dance
Dancing is about rhythm. One steps and moves and the partner smoothly follows. The process of getting and losing a tooth is like a carefully choreographed dance.
After a baby tooth erupts, it saves a space in the jawbone for the permanent tooth to one day reside. When the baby tooth and the permanent tooth dance to the same rhythm, the baby tooth's root will dissolve; the tooth will fall out, and the permanent tooth will erupt and take its place.
In rare instances, a tooth partner loses its rhythm. The permanent tooth erupts, but the baby tooth is still firmly secured in the jawbone. When this happens, we say that the baby tooth is ankylosed (ank-ill-osed). This means that the tooth root has welded to the jawbone and now cannot fall out, but the permanent tooth will still erupt, painlessly and out of alignment.
A tooth is not a simple object. Beneath the gums lies a complex system of dental structures that protect a tooth so that it can last a lifetime.
A tooth has a periodontal ligament. This is a tough, sock-like structure that snugly fits around a tooth's root. The fibers in the ligament attach to two structures: 1-the cementum, a thin layer of calcified material that covers a root's surface, and 2-the jawbone. In essence, the ligament is like a thread of a spider's web that suspends the web between two tree branches.
Causes of ankylo...