Category: General and Preventive Dentistry
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Onset Anesthetic: Fast+Comfortable Numbing
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General and Preventive Dentistry
General dentistry is important for general health, for the whole family! We love helping our new mothers learn about proper oral care for their babies, and introducing them to help with teething and nutrition for growing mouths. As the child grows, general dentistry serves to monitor growth and development, and coordinate care with pediatric…
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Baking soda, yes! Vinegar, No!
Gentlemen, I don’t fully agree with some of these recommendations! Baking soda has a much lower abrasion index than more than 75% of the toothpaste available on the shelves, so feel confident to sprinkle a little on your toothbrush each morning and brush gently for whiter teeth! Vinegar is Acetic Acid, which has a pH…
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What are dental study models?
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Top 3 causes of Tooth sensitivity
Top 3 causes of Tooth sensitivity Clenching – Our teeth are intended to make contact a total of 8 seconds out of every 24 hour period, during the actual impact of chewing food. Stress related clenching puts undue force on the teeth and can arrest the natural outward flow of fluid in the dentinal tubules…
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Keep those fragments! Easy tooth repair after ‘break-fast”
This patient had eaten a nice breakfast of the crunchiest toast and bacon ever! To his surprise, he had broken one of his front teeth in three pieces. Conventional wisdom is to bring whatever broken tooth parts to your dentist for her to see if she can use any part of it…
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Customized Bacterial testing for Decay sensitivity
Prior to fluoridation of public drinking water, tooth decay was widespread. To date, the epidemic of dental decay has dropped off dramatically. That said, in highly susceptible patients, it seems that no amount of careful brushing and flossing, professional hygiene care, fluoride, and diet control keep the new cavities from recurring. In recent times a…
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Smile balancing through functional tooth reshaping
According to Gordon Christensen, dental equilibration (bite balancing) might be one of the most widely UNDER-utilized services in dentistry. – JADA April 2005 136(4): 497–499; Teeth that fit together correctly do not require the additional muscular activity needed to shift the jaw to the side or squeeze unilaterally when one side hits first. The art of…
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Myth about most “metal-free” dental crowns
As a restorative dentist, I place equal value on predictability, longevity, comfort, biocompatibility, and aesthetics. One soap box I don’t mind stepping on is the busting down the metal-free myth about the more popular new ceramic crown options. The two most popular types of all-ceramic crowns for back teeth are made from aluminum oxide and…
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Hard raw-foods diet leads to fractured fillings; gold chewing surface sustains bite
Conservative dentistry and naturally sustaining lifestyles go together, and as such, many of the people attracted to our practice focus on their nutrition and overall health. This patient eats a strict raw-foods diet, including very hard foods like raw carrots and almonds. Though amalgam filling material has a compressive strength (aka, ability…
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Accidental fork bite threatens lower teeth
This lovely 90-year-old patient has kept most of her teeth her whole life. She flosses twice daily and uses fluoride every night! One day at a luncheon with friends, she accidentally bit a salad fork, and felt two of her lower front teeth become rather loose and painful to the touch. After…
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Leaky crown gets replaced with exact match after root canal
A large filling is frequently not strong enough to withstand biting pressure on a cracked or damaged tooth. In that case, it is customary for the tooth to be protected with a restoration called a crown. Crowns can be made of different materials: gold, porcelain, or some combination. This patient had a…
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Early decay visible with enhanced Digital X-rays
Conventional film X-rays would require chemical processing and did not have the capability of changing contrast and gain. With digital X-rays, we can see the earliest of decays, and thus treat decay conservatively. This patient was seen in our hygiene department for routine cleaning and check-up. The ultra low-radiation exposures did not initially…
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Decay under amalgam filling is typical
General dentistry in the United States has been trending toward the discontinued use of silver-mercury alloy fillings, aka, amalgams. My own preference for tooth-colored resins is for several reasons, the most obvious being that as an aesthetic dentist, I like teeth to look like teeth. Additionally, resin is not affected by temperature…
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White dental fillings less sensitive when restored under rubber dam
One of the most challenging types of “simple dentistry” is to accomplish a direct resin restoration (aka, white filling) that looks good, functions well, and seals out bacteria from re-entering the side of the tooth. Only a few years , which had been somewhat sensitive since being placed. An X-ray of the…