Why dental implants?

Title: The Advantages of Dental Implants: Restoring Confidence and Oral Health

Introduction:
A missing tooth can have a significant impact on one’s appearance, oral health, and self-confidence. Thankfully, dental implants have revolutionized the field of dentistry, offering a reliable and long-lasting solution for replacing missing teeth. Unlike traditional dentures or bridges, dental implants provide numerous advantages that make them the preferred choice for many individuals seeking to restore their smile. Let’s explore why dental implants are advantageous.

1. Natural-Looking and Functioning Teeth:
   Dental implants are designed to closely resemble natural teeth, both in appearance and function. They are custom-made to blend seamlessly with your existing teeth, ensuring a natural and aesthetically pleasing result. Implants also offer the ability to eat, speak, and smile with confidence, as they provide stability and durability comparable to natural teeth.
2. Improved Oral Health:
   When a tooth is lost, the surrounding teeth can shift and become misaligned, leading to bite problems and potential jaw joint issues. Dental implants prevent these problems by maintaining the integrity of the dental arch and preventing bone loss. They stimulate the jawbone, promoting healthy bone growth and preserving facial structure.
3. Longevity and Durability:
   One of the significant advantages of dental implants is their long lifespan. With proper care, they can last a lifetime, making them a cost-effective option in the long run. Unlike other tooth replacement options, such as dentures or bridges, implants do not require replacement or frequent adjustments.
4. Enhanced Comfort and Convenience:
   Unlike removable dentures, dental implants are fixed in the jawbone, eliminating the discomfort associated with ill-fitting prosthetics. They become a permanent part of your mouth, allowing you to eat your favorite foods without restrictions and eliminating the need for messy adhesives or removal during cleaning.

Conclusion:
Dental implants offer numerous advantages when it comes to replacing missing teeth. They not only provide a natural-looking and functioning solution but also contribute to overall oral health and well-being. By restoring your smile and self-confidence, dental implants can positively impact your quality of life. If you’re considering tooth replacement options, consulting with a dental professional can help you explore the benefits of dental implants further and determine if they are the right choice for you.

Cerec Crown on Fractured Lower Molar

I am loving the Cerec more and more.  Look at this broken down tooth.

 

Amalgam metal fillings last really well but over time they slump and deform from chewing.  Eventually the tooth develops stress fractures and often people wait too long before they decide to replace the filling.  The tooth may break unfavourably and split through the middle meaning it can’t be treated and needs removal, or the nerve could be affected and a root canal treatment is required.

Fortunately the tooth pictured at the start didn’t have any extensive fractures in the underlying tooth structure and a hard ceramic crown could be scanned, milled, and cemented on the tooth in one visit on the same day.  It makes for such a great day at the office to provide these high quality restorations!

 

Come and see us at Nundah Village Dental

Diastemma – Gap between my front teeth

 

Just a quick case of bonding tooth coloured resin directly onto the teeth.  No drilling of the tooth, no injection, one hour! Easy

If you’re looking for a dentist in North Brisbane come to Nundah Village Dental

Why should I floss my teeth? Why do I need Dental X-rays?

Teeth and gums are damaged by bacteria. The bacteria feed of the sugars in our food and excrete acid as a waste product! The acid dissolves the protective calcium enamel shell on the teeth making it chalky and porous. Then more bacteria can grow in the porosities where they can’t be cleaned away, and so the lesion progresses into the tooth. Often people have no idea until they have pain and by then it is way too late – often leading to need for the tooth to have root canal treatment or extraction.

Where do the bacteria live on my teeth? Where it is hardest to clean! Think about your bathroom. If you have a dark moist room the shower will get mouldy even if you clean the shower often. The worst areas will be in the grooves and edges where it is hardest to clean. These areas often need a knife to scrape the biofilm off followed by heavy scrubbing and bleach. A light airy bathroom with a dry environment is not friendly to the bacteria and mould, and if the bathroom has no tiles, it just needs a simple wipe over.

Think about your teeth. The smooth biting surfaces are cleaned simply by chewing. The bacteria live in the deeper grooves, and especially in between the teeth. You can see in the photos above the decay is the black infected dentine inside the tooth coming from in between the teeth. there are also some stains and a spot in the biting surface from a small pit that held bacteria. The other areas are unaffected by decay.

What about diet and sugars. Sugar feeds the bacteria and allows them to become sticky and harder to clean off the tooth – like the dark moist bathroom favours mould, the unflossed high sugar mouth favours bacteria for decay.

You’ll also see that the decay is hardly visible without drilling into the tooth. that is why you dentist wants to take X-rays every couple of years. Otherwise, we sometimes can’t see decay until it is too big! Remember that most tooth coloured fillings last maybe 6-12 years in studies. Good hygiene, well placed fillings and healthy mouths may have much longer lasting fillings. I have patients with 20-year-old resin fillings and ones that fail every few years. Every time a filling is replaced, a little bit more tooth is sacrificed, therefore trying to get decay early is crucial if you want to keep your teeth into your 80s and beyond. A dental Xray these days is very low radiation equivalent to about that received during an hour’s flight in a plane. If the decay gets to cause a toothache, then the dentist needs multiple X-rays to do a root canal treatment or an X-ray to safely remove your tooth without damage to the jaw and vital structures.

What to do?

Eat well, brush 2/day, floss each night, find a good dentist you trust, get a check and cleaning every 6 months, and have an Xray every couple of years. That’s what I do! Below are my teeth when I was 42 – the result of following my advice. The crown on the bottom is the end result of needing a filling when I was 15, which needed replacement, and then the tooth cracked. Prevention is way better than cure.

Happy 2023 – for further info go to nundahdental.com.au or better yet – come in and say hello!

Here are some final pictures showing how decay is seen on a dental X-ray – the dark bit in the middle is the nerve, and the dark bit coming from the flossing contacts is decay.

Covid19 and dentistry

So far in Australia we have been very lucky compared to other countered, but it is timely to realise how important your dental health is in relation to your overall health.
Due to mandatory restrictions, we have only been able to treat acute pain or emergencies for the past 3 weeks, and only using extreme protective equipment.

Dentistry has been restricted because of aerosols produced, meaning we haven’t had the opportunity to use a drill, or do any fillings or cleans.
We have had many patients calling recently with infections and problems ranging from decay and broken teeth through to dangerously infected wisdom teeth. There are potentially serious risks when things have to be delayed or can’t be treated, and of course there is pain and anxiety being felt by these people. Sadly the risk is even higher in our elderly patients, with other health problems being complicated by dental problems, and higher restrictions on us being able to see them.
A dental infection can have serious outcomes for people with diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis and many other health conditions. Basically, many dental problems result in inflammation, and this inflammation has an effect on your overall health.
I wanted to assure everyone coming to Nundah Village Dental that we have been going above and beyond in regards to protecting the safety of our patients, staff, and community, and contacting as many patients as we can to reach out and give advice.

The good news is that restrictions appear to be easing. I congratulate our community for helping slow the spread of this disease that puts all of our lives under stress and strain. We know that prevention and regular dental care is so important, not only to avoid pain, but for many people to avoid serious health outcomes
We are working hard to prioritise our patients and want to let our patients know we are here for you, and we will be in touch as we move forward, to reschedule and see our patients in the most efficient way we can.
Stay safe and keep flattening the curve.

Recurrent Tooth Decay – How long should my fillings last?

Nothing lasts forever – but somethings last better than others right?  Various studies put the average life expectancy for a tooth coloured filling between 10 and 15 years.  You can expect variability according to how big the filling is, how strong the tooth is, how heavy you chew and what you eat, how acidic or decay forming your diet and saliva is, and how well the filling was placed.  The reason indirect fillings like gold or ceramic last better is because they are a better fit and are polished smooth so bacteria have a harder time sticking to them.

Here is a routine day for me with some failed old fillings.  Sure there are lots of reasons for the failure – but the lack of contact between the teeth means that more food can pack in the space and stay there.  This then breaks down with bacteria feeding off it and increases the chance of new decay between the teeth around the margin of the existing fillings.

 

You can see the sticky film of plaque (bacteria) sticking to the fillings where the 2 teeth are not touching.  Next you see the damage to the tooth underneath the fillings when I started to remove them.  If you have poorly placed fillings or don’t look after your teeth you have to replace fillings more often.  You may then run out of tooth as you get older – and then need more complex options and more expense to keep things going, or less complex options (like dentures) which means less comfort (i.e. can’t chew and painful ulcers where the denture rubs.

The new fillings placed have the proper contact between the teeth restored!

Keeping teeth for life is hard, but it is so worth it!

Cerec crown – biocopy

This tooth was cracking and had been repaired with resin fillings for 15 years.  Eventually there was no option but to try and support the tooth with a full crown as it was cracking and about to split in half.

I was worried about the colour and also the shape.  The CEREC allowed me to scan the original tooth and make the exact same shape in ceramic.  the colour came down to some tinting and artwork!

Overall I was extremely pleased with the result, and the patient had a new strong tooth within one appointment!

 

????????????????????????????????????

????????????????????????????????????

Dental Implant Upper Molar

This patient of mine lost the upper molar a few months ago and the area was filled with a bone graft at the same time the tooth was removed.

 

A titanium implant was placed and then a healing cap screwed over the top.  This is then given a few months to allow the bone to grow and lock in the implant.  The wire was placed to prevent the teeth from moving and tipping during this period.

This is how things look after healing when the cap is removed.

 

Finally a crown can be attached to the implant and our patient has a new tooth to chew on!

Cerec same day crowns

We added Cerec to our practice in 2017 and I couldn’t be happier.  Crowns are a stronger more permanent way to restore badly damaged teeth.  Traditionally a crown is made over 2 visits by initially preparing the tooth, taking messy impressions of the tooth, and fabricating a temporary crown while the impression is used in the laboratory to make the new crown.  Cerec eliminates this – a digital scan is taken of the tooth, and while the patient sits in the waiting room the scan is used to design a perfectly fitting restoration.  The design is milled out of a solid block of ceramic, fired in a furnace to make it strong, and then it is cemented on the tooth – same day, one injection, no mess!

 

????????????????????????????????????

While it is not for every case and there are still requirements for other materials like gold crowns, and the specialised aesthetic work that my laboratory technician does so well, I am loving the opportunity to provide quality restorations with the convenience that Cerec provides.

 

Tooth Grinding – Bruxism

Some people can do significant damage to their teeth from grinding them in their sleep.  Sometimes it is a daytime habit.  This can lead to abnormal wear, cracked teeth, pain in the teeth and even tooth loss.

Below are pictures of a person I saw not long ago and you can see how far over they move the jaw.

This movement outside the normal range of chewing is called Parafunction.  We know this must be from habitual chewing  (like nail biting) or from bruxing during sleep, because people just don’t chew their food on the front teeth in such an uncomfortable position.

A night splint can help protect the teeth from damage while the patient is asleep.