Dental Surgery

Sedation Dentistry – What Is It and What’s Involved?

There’s no better dental treatment than one carried out by a wonderful dentist with a soft hand. So soft, that you can’t even tell something significant is being done inside your mouth. That’s the sign of a great dentist.

But, regardless of how nice your dentist is or magical his or her hands are, people can be and are still terrified of the dentist or of getting any dental treatment done. Dentists have unfortunately been stereo-typed as those evil pain givers who do excruciating procedures within and around your teeth.

That’s not true, and the fault usually lies with the people who allow their dental health to deteriorate to an extent that such treatment is needed. As a result, they end up with an infection which could need more than just a simple filling, that will hurt and then the dentist becomes the culprit for causing pain. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

So, if you’re one of those people or know someone with an impossible-to-get-over fear of the dentist, there is a solution for you all – Sedation dentistry.

What is Sedation Dentistry?

Sedation Dentistry

The basics of sedation dentistry are simple: you are sedated to a certain degree while your treatment is performed by the dentist. You wake up with the completed dental treatment and never had to face the fear, pain or anxiety you felt while sitting in the dental chair.

To be more specific, it involves the use of pharmacological agents or drugs known as sedatives which act by exerting a depressive effect on the central nervous system, in those areas typically concerned with controlling conscious awareness.

Sedation dentistry is practiced by skilled, Board certified sedation dentists who use these pharmacological agents to induce sedation. It is meant to aid in treating dental anxiety, but is not the only solution.

For those who have severe dental anxiety or dental phobia, various psychological approaches, a very caring dentist and behavioral therapy may be helpful in addition to using sedatives for any dental procedure.

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Toothache Remedies – Home Remedies for Toothache That Work

You will often hear of someone complaining of a toothache. It could even be yourself, regardless of the fact that you brush your teeth twice daily. A toothache, technically known as “odontalgia”, is a general term used for any pain or dull ache associated with a tooth, whether it comes from within the tooth or from its surrounding tissues. It is normally a consequence of an underlying dental problem such as tooth decay, a cracked tooth, an abcess, gum disease and could even indicate a heart problem, believe it or not.

The pain felt from a toothache can be localized to a specific tooth or generalized to its adjacent teeth. If any pain is felt in one tooth, it can also radiate to its neighboring teeth. This is because all the teeth in the jaw (mandibular teeth) are supplied by branches of a single nerve, the Mandibular Nerve and all the upper (maxillary) teeth are supplied by the same nerve, the Maxillary Nerve and its associated branches.

The types and symptoms of a toothache vary according to what kind of dental problem exists. Let’s look at all the possible causes of a toothache, and what kind of pain could be associated with these.

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Dental Assistant Salary and Training – An In Depth Review

Everyone has been to the dentist at some point in their lives, if not for a major dental treatment, then for a simple routine dental check-up. People tend to not pay attention to anyone in the room during a treatment because they are just so focused on what the dentist might be doing in their mouths and thinking of what could possibly go wrong. They don’t realize that the dentist isn’t doing everything single-handedly to provide them the best possible treatment, that there is someone in the shadows constantly at work.

This angel of a helper is the dental assistant. Any dentist would say not a day at the clinic can by without an assistant or two to help out. All the tedious tasks that assistants must perform in limited time spans, the constant run-around and having to make sure that nothing goes wrong, their job isn’t as easy as it may seem.

Dental Assistant Job Description

Dental assistant duties encompass a wide range of tasks in and out of the clinic. How do you think Santa gets all those hundreds of presents so beautifully wrapped up and arranged so quick in just one night? He has all his elves, ‘Santa’s helpers’ as we know them. Your dentist’s assistant is his very own Santa’s helper – not that he wraps presents for patients, of course.

So what does a dental assistant do? Quite a lot, actually. Assistants work inside the dental clinic with the dentist, deal with patients, work in the dental office and in the dental laboratory. I’ll elaborate on that.

The dental assistant will receive you when you enter the dental clinic and have you wait in the waiting area while she/he sets up the dental chair for you. They’ll take out and arrange all the necessary dental instruments the dentist will need to perform any examination and treatment procedures. If they're a good assistant, they won’t take too long and they’ll have you seated in the dental chair as soon as possible.

While working with the dentist, an assistant acts as the right-hand person (or the side-kick, really) for the dentist. They stand right by while the dentist performs the procedure, hand the dentist any material or instrument they need and help to retract your lips to help the dentist focus better on the tooth being treated. They also control the saliva suction pipe to keep the treatment area in the mouth clear and dry.

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Mini Dental Implants – Ideal Solution For Loose Dentures

We all know someone who has lost a tooth or even all their teeth. Tooth loss is a common problem in the middle-aged to the elderly. People can even lose their teeth at a young age, either due to trauma, extensive decay, sports injuries or even a dental treatment completely gone wrong.

The elderly normally wear what we know as ‘dentures’. These are artificial replacements for their lost teeth. They are made of gum-colored acrylic (plastic-like) material to which acrylic or porcelain artificial teeth are attached, and they rest completely on the gums. For those who have just one or two teeth missing, a ‘partial denture’ or a ‘bridge’ is used to replace those teeth.

Dentures come with many drawbacks, the major one being that they are easily displaced while one is trying to talk or chew food. Hence the denture wearer is in constant fear of the denture falling off or becoming loose in the mouth (which, obviously, would be embarrassing). Other disadvantages of dentures are lesser efficiency while chewing and even impeded speech in some patients. Temporary solutions for retaining a denture in place are pastes and adhesives, but these need to be used several times a day and are, needless to say, inconvenient.

You may ask, what can be done to avoid dentures becoming loose? How can they be retained? Mini dental implants have been designed specifically for this purpose. An implant, in general, is a metal screw which is fixed into bone that previously held teeth. It is a permanent root replacement for a lost tooth, upon which a crown or a ‘fake tooth’ is seated. Multiple implants can be placed in the bone to replace a number of teeth together. I’ll explain everything about implants in more detail.

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Denture Implants – What are They and What’s Involved with Denture Implants

The role of dentures is to replace missing teeth in the wearer. The most common type of dentures are the removable dentures. I’m sure we all have memories of our granddad or grandma removing their dentures before bedtime, and leaving them soaking in a jar of water on the bedside table.

Removable dentures consist of two primary types, full and partial dentures.

Full dentures are usually made from a gum colored acrylic plastic with embedded acrylic or porcelain teeth. Partial dentures or bridge are made from a mix of materials, usually a combination of acrylic and a metal framework, although the most expensive type of partial dentures are made from cast metal.

All removable dentures suffer from the same problems, in that they rely on the oral ridge - gums - of the upper or lower jaw for their placement and retention. In the case of full plates, suction/friction also plays its part in keeping the dentures in place. Unfortunately, dentures still move, both laterally & horizontally, causing discomfort for the wearer, and even preventing them from eating certain types of sticky or hard foods.

Another draw back of dentures is that the missing teeth in the jaw encourages the bone mass to shrink along with the gums. This leads to further movement in the denture.

Denture Implants

To avoid these problems with full or partial dentures, denture wearers can opt for denture implants as an economical alternative for solving the problems associated with removable dentures.

Denture Implants are surgically fixed screws fixed into the jaw bone and act as substitutes for the roots (usually made of titanium) of the missing teeth. Once embedded and bonded to the bone they cand serve as a foundation for the dentures themselves, known as overdentures, which fit over or “cap” the denture implants.

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