Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Beautiful Crowns

Fantastic case from today. Older restorations on the two front teeth that were starting to break down. Took off the old stuff. Had our lab guys come take a look and do a customized shade for us, and boom. Beautiful. Love this part of the job.  







Tuesday, September 15, 2015

What is a Dental Implant?

I'm not sure of the reaction that I will get here.
I am going to put up a picture of what a dental implant looks like.

Sometimes people just don't want to know about stuff like that.
When someone is going to get a hip replaced, bowel resection, etc
sometimes the worst thing they can do is go onto the internet and look
for pictures of the procedure they are about to have done. 
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. 

But even with all that being said, I'm going to do this anyway.
If you have children sitting on your lap you may want to 
have them look away.

I give you ...... a dental implant.


Yup. That's it.
We take out the bad tooth. 
We use the hole that is ALREADY THERE.
We thread the implant into the old tooth space.
We then put a crown on the implant.

If this doesn't seem that bad, it's because ...
it isn't.



Thursday, September 10, 2015

Tongue Cancer

What does Cancer of the Tongue look like, feel like, act like?

What I tell my patients is that if there is ANY change in your tongue,
that lasts longer then about 2 weeks, that you have never experienced before,
 you should go see an oral surgeon.

Things happen to your tongue.
You can bite it. 
You can burn it. 
You can get canker sores.
Etc Etc

And some of these things can happen repeatedly over time.
People with Geographic Tongue, for instance, can get odd 
shapes and feelings on their tongue, and it can be absolutely
normal for them.

But all of these things will go away. 
IF you notice something changing that DOESN'T go away.
And in fact continues to get larger and/or begins to feel hurt,
burn, and/or feel uncomfortable in any way.

Go to the oral surgeon and have it looked at.
A small biopsy should be taken to determine what is going on.

Here are some pictures of Tongue Cancers.






Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Great case from this morning. A patient came in with a tooth broken off at the gum line. A bridge was not an option due to one of the teeth, next to the broken one, already being tied into a different bridge. So an implant was chosen. We extracted the tooth. It had 2 roots. We backed filled one of the root holes with a bone graft. 
Prepared the other root hole for the size and shape of the implant we wanted. 




We then placed the implant. The patient came in at 9 and left by 11. We carry the most common sizes of implants on hand. If you can replace a hip, knee, or lung, you can replace a tooth. Only much easier.