Are You Healthy Enough for Traditional Oral Surgery?

Oral surgery should never be taken lightly. If you need it, you should receive it soon before more long term damage is done to your oral health. Traditional oral surgery may not be for everybody though. If your health is at stake, it is important to seriously ask yourself if you are well enough for traditional oral surgery. It can be a more invasive procedure and a potentially harmful procedure for people who have had recent illnesses or have current serious health problems that make them more vulnerable. If you are concerned that you are not healthy enough, or you do not want to endure the long recovery period that comes with some surgeries like gum grafting, visit our office for an alternative option that works wonders. 

Traditional oral surgery still works excellently and is advised for many patients, but if your health puts you in an at-risk category, our laser therapy might be the best option for you. Our laser surgery uses an intense beam of light to correct dental flaws. Unwanted or unneeded tissue is easily vaporized with the laser energy. Lasers can also be a wonderful alternative to classic root planing and scaling. Our dental lasers gently remove bacteria and infection as they cleanse your gums and teeth. These lasers are often used to clean infected areas prior to another laser surgery like a gum graft. The pros of laser oral surgery are unlimited, but a few of the main uses and desirous qualities are listed following.

The Pros of Laser Oral Surgery:
Dental laser oral surgery is quicker and more efficient than traditional methods.
The use of lasers can detect early decay in your teeth.
Lasers remove bacteria more quickly than traditional dental tools.
Laser therapy is a less invasive way to remove the infection below the gum line if you have periodontal disease.
Lasers can reshape your gums after periodontal disease as an alternative to gum grafting.
Laser surgery cuts down on recovery time because it is so minimally invasive. The laser heat can jumpstart healing.
Laser heat seals blood vessels and minimizes the need for sutures after a procedure.
Our dental lasers can cut through and drain a tooth abscess for fast relief.
We can use our lasers to gently remove small potentially cancerous bits of oral tissue to send it in for a biopsy.
Dental lasers can be used to remove lesions or sores that might be causing discomfort.
With dental lasers, you don't have to fear the ominous sound of a dental drill. This can be helpful for people who suffer from dental phobia.

Our laser oral surgery minimizes discomfort, and the potential for swelling following a procedure is reduced.
Although the pros of dental laser oral surgery far outweigh the cons, there is sometimes still a need for traditional oral surgery. In cases where your immune system is already compromised, we definitely encourage you to pursue a laser oral surgery first as it will more easily maintain your oral health as your immune system continues to heal.

Laser Dentistry  >  Oral Surgery

How Implant Dentistry Can Benefit You

The primary focus of implant dentistry is to provide you with a strong, stable, and great looking replacement when you have lost a tooth. For your natural teeth, the job of stability and strength falls to the root. The root also has a symbiotic relationship with the jawbone that helps it to provide additional support for your tooth. In order to replicate the work done by the root, we use a tiny titanium screw that is placed directly into your jawbone, in most cases, which not only gives your new tooth the security it needs but also imitates the relationship with the jawbone. There are numerous reasons we can give you as to why you should consider using implant dentistry to replace a lost tooth. The most popular reason we have heard from our patients is the convenience. Since the dental implant is virtually the same as a tooth, in many aspects, it requires no additional maintenance and places no further limitations on what you can and cannot eat. For many people this ability to carry one with their lifestyle, despite having lost a tooth, is the critical component to choosing implant dentistry over some of the other alternatives.

As implant dentistry continues to make great stride in improving the quality of people's lives after they have lost teeth, there is more information available about them and more patients who actually come in with some information about implants. This is good because it then allows us to work with you on understanding the process even better and explaining some of the nuances. It also allows us to create a plan that will help you reach your goals with implant dentistry. For example, most people know about implant dentistry using a tiny titanium screw that is placed directly into the jawbone. This is known as an Endosteal Implant, and is definitely the most common type of implant that we use. However, we base the type of implant we use on the amount of bone density available and if the jaw bone can actually sustain an implant. If we find that your jaw cannot sustain a regular implant, we have the option of doing what is known as a Subperiosteal implant. A Subperiosteal implant is placed in the gum but slightly above the jawbone, or resting on the jawbone so that there is no added pressure placed on the already weakened bone structure.

Another small nugget that we like to sometimes share with patients is that there are two schools of thought when it comes to the healing process after the implant has been placed. One group favors a one-step approach. This approach completes the implant surgery by covering the implant with tissue and then leaving it to heal naturally. The bone and the gum tissue heal over a period of 4 to 6 weeks. The other school of thought is to use a two-step approach. In this method, the dentist places a small device known as a dental abutment over the implant, allowing for the bone and tissue to heal around it. The healing takes exactly the same amount of time as the one-step approach though the abutment does provide some additional protection.

Cosmetic Dentist  >  Gum Recession