Choosing the Right Dentures in Houston

Treating a patient who has lost teeth is no simple task. This is especially true for patients who have lost multiple teeth.

Our teeth play many important, vital roles in our lives. They help us chew our food, form words, and shape our mouths.

When a tooth is lost, it can affect speech, eating, and drinking. If the space is left alone, the teeth around the gap can shift, changing the shape of the mouth.

 

When multiple teeth are lost, these problems are compounded.

Addressing Lost Teeth with Dentures

Dentures are a low cost method to replacing several lost teeth at once. They are especially beneficial for patients who would prefer to replace several teeth with spending on the more permanent dental bridges.

Dental bridges can replace one or two teeth that are adjacent, but it requires filing down teeth near the gap to create anchor points. Dentures can be held in place with a strategically placed metal plate.

While it seems like dentures are the better option, it still must be considered that they require a great deal of extra care than a dental bridge. They may also require more replacements as time goes on.

Partial and Complete Dentures

Dentures can either be made as a complete set to replace all of the teeth or as a partial set to replace only the number of teeth that are missing.

Complete dentures can only be created and installed once all existing natural teeth have been removed. The gums need to start healing to determine the final shape of the inside of the mouth so a perfectly shaped set can be fashioned.

Complete dentures can take between two and three months to create, meaning the patient will be without teeth for that period of time. Once complete, the dentures will replace all of the teeth and restore the patient’s bite, speech, and drinking ability to normal.

Partial dentures only replace teeth that are missing, and can replace anywhere from two teeth to all but one tooth. They are usually constructed with a central hub plate from which all the teeth are branched out to the appropriate position.

The dentist creates a mold of the patient’s mouth so that all of the teeth can be perfectly placed for a comfortable, secure fit.

This method preserves any remaining teeth and prevents them from shifting position by filling the spaces left by lost teeth. It is often a much more cost effective option to replace several teeth, especially for senior citizens.

Dental Insurance for Dentures

Dentures, both complete and partial, are typically well covered by dental insurance.

This can be especially helpful for seniors with a fixed income. Dental insurance can reduce the upfront costs of dental procedures in Houston by as much as 80%.

As we age, the gum line recedes, and this can give rise to gum disease and tooth loss. For this reason, seniors are 70% likely to get gum disease.

With dental insurance, procedures that address gum disease or replace lost teeth will be covered, making it easier on the patient to afford the corrective measures that will increase their oral health.

Early Detection of Periodontal Disease Means Easy Treatment

Gum disease is a problem that affects nearly half of all Americans, including up to 70% of senior citizens.

Many people may not even realize they have gum disease until it becomes a very big problem, which is why it is important to regularly see a Houston periodontist.

A periodontist in Houston will examine your gums using various techniques including x-rays and probing in addition to a visual examination to find signs of gum disease cropping up.

Symptoms of Periodontal Disease

Periodontal disease is often characterized by swollen and tender gums. For milder forms of the disease, no outward symptoms may be visible, or they may go unnoticed by the untrained eye.

A Houston periodontist will thoroughly examine your teeth and gums, looking for the signs of gum disease such as the swelling and discoloration.

Typical Periodontal Exam

Like with seeing a Houston dentist, a periodontal exam involves a thorough visual examination of your gums. The periodontist checks the front and back of teeth looking for collections of plaque and symptoms of periodontal disease.

Using x-rays, the periodontist can see what’s going on underneath the gums. In severe cases of gum disease, infections may show up on the x-rays, showing the periodontist where to concentrate their efforts.

A dental probe is used to check pocket depth around the teeth and gums. In a healthy patient’s gums, there should be very shallow pockets seen.

If there are larger pockets, bacteria can more easily take up residence and cause an infection, which leads to gum disease.

Most of the time, periodontal disease is caused by allowing plaque and tartar to form around the gum line.

If this material is not regularly cleared away, it hardens and protects bacteria that can wreak havoc under your gums.

Treating Periodontal Disease

In moderate cases of periodontal disease, your Houston periodontist will use a method called scaling and root planning to remove the bacteria and help prevent it from returning.

Scaling is a method of actually scraping the bacteria from the tooth. It can be a bit uncomfortable, but with sedation dentistry it’s not as bad.

Root planning is procedure that smooths out the roots of teeth. When the surface of a tooth is rough, bacteria can cling to it and it can be more difficult to remove, which is why scaling is necessary.

Once the bacteria has been removed and any inflections are cleared up, the gums will begin to heal on their own and any swelling, pain, and discoloration will go away.

It is important to maintain a healthy regimen of daily oral hygiene after being treated for periodontal disease. Only by keeping your teeth healthy and clean can you prevent the bacteria from causing problems again.

If periodontal disease progresses too far, the methods for stopping its progression become more aggressive and uncomfortable.

Ideally, it’s best to get regular checkups and address the problem of gum disease as soon as it surfaces, rather than waiting it out to see if it gets better.

Early treatment is not only easier to do, it is less costly and more effective at reversing any damage.

Choosing a Dental Crown that Fits Your Life

When a tooth becomes damaged from an accident or decay, and a standard filling isn’t enough to save it, a dental crown may be the best option.

Many people feel self conscious about cavities and the need for fillings, and they may feel even less inclined to get a dental crown.

While some dental crowns are still made of metal, they are not the only option.

Choosing a Dental Crown in Houston

There are several options available for dental crowns in Houston. Their availability at your Houston dentist can vary based on the material, but in most cases they’ll all be present.

Dental crowns can be made from metal, resin, ceramic, and porcelain.

●     Metal Crowns
Metal crowns are usually created from gold alloy, which has been a standard crown for several centuries. Other metals that may be used include nickel, palladium, and chromium.

The type of metal used usually depends on if the patient has an allergy to a certain metal as well as the metal’s availability.

Additionally, temporary crowns (which you would get while a permanent one is constructed) are fashioned from stainless steel.

●     Resin Crowns
Resin crowns are very low cost and cause the least amount of wear to nearby teeth. However, they are also the least durable. They may require replacing once every few years instead of once every decade or two.

●     Porcelain and Ceramic Crowns
All-porcelain and all-ceramic crowns are made from a singular material and can be color matched to your teeth. These look and feel the most natural, but are often the most costly. However, they do provide a decent durability and can last upwards of 10 years.

●     Porcelain-Metal Crowns
As a middle-of-the-road option, porcelain fused to metal crowns provide a good cost/durability/appearance balance, and can still be color matched to your teeth. These are often the most popular option for getting dental crowns in Houston.

Why Should I get a Dental Crown?

Dental crowns do more than restore the look of your teeth. They can also restore the function of them.

A damaged tooth that has been chipped, fractured, or decayed may be painful to bite, chew, or drink with. Even a simple probing with your own tongue can be enough to shoot a lance op pain through your mouth.

With a dental crown, your Houston dentist gives you the ability to restore your smile and ability to drink and eat like you did before the tooth became a problem.

Dental crowns restore the shape and appearance of a tooth along with much of its strength. Metal crowns provide greater durability, which is perfect for molars.

On the other hand, porcelain and ceramic crowns can look like real teeth, making them especially suited for the more visible front teeth.

How Are Dental Crowns Applied?

First, your Houston dentist in Tanglewood area will prepare the tooth receiving the crown by filing it down.

While the crown acts like a real crown in that it fits over your existing tooth, it won’t fit over the whole tooth.

By filing it down, the crown will be able to match the size and shape of your original tooth.

A mold is created to show the dental lab what area they have to work with and how to shape the dental crown.

Once the new crown is completed, you will return to your Houston dentist to have it installed. The dentist will make sure that it fits securely and snugly, and once it does, it is cemented into place.

Targeting the Root of the Problem

Root canal treatments are often one of the most feared dental procedures. However, as technology and medical practices have advanced, they have become more commonplace and less painful.

What is a Root Canal Treatment?

A root canal treatment is a procedure that is performed by a Houston dentist. It involves entering a tooth, usually from the top of the crown, and removing infected or decayed dental pulp from inside the tooth.

After the damaged pulp is removed, the tooth is filled with gutta percha and a standard filling to strengthen it.

Sounds simple like that, doesn’t it? It really is!

A root canal treatment is designed to relieve pain, not cause it. Dentists of long ago did not have the sophisticated technology we have now, and they had limited access to anesthetics, which are important to maintaining a pain free experience.

How Is a Root Canal Treatment Performed?

When you first come in for a root canal treatment at a Houston dentist, the first thing that will be done is you will have x-ray images taken.

These images will help the dentist visualize the inside of a tooth needing the procedure. It will show the areas of decayed dental pulp, giving a sort of road map to follow.

Next, you will receive sedation dentistry to make your experience as painless as possible. It can also make it seem like the procedure goes by much faster.

After the x-rays are completed and the dentist is prepared for the procedure, they will drill into the top of the tooth.

Upon reaching the pulp chamber of the tooth, which contains dental pulp, the tissue that provides feeling and blood for the tooth, they will begin clearing out the infection.

Many times, the pulp chamber will be cleared out completely, as this area becomes completely infected, which is partially why your tooth hurts before a procedure.

After this chamber is cleared out, the dentist will use the x-rays as a guide to find each root canal that is filled with decayed pulp.

These canals extend from the pulp chamber down the roots of your teeth and into the gums where they connect with the rest of your circulatory system.

At the base of a tooth root, the infection may have caused an abscess to form. This can be the other reason why your tooth is hurting.

The abscess is a pocket of infected tissue that causes swelling and inflammation to occur around it.

Once the abscess is cleared away, your teeth will stop hurting.

After all of this is complete, the dentist will fill the root canals and pulp chamber with gutta percha to protect them, then fill the crown of the tooth with a standard filling.

Dental fillings are important to maintain the strength of the tooth. A hollow tooth would break very easily.

Does the Dentist Always Take Everything Out?

When using the x-rays, the dentist will look for canals that still have healthy pulp and preserve those. Sometimes in trying to preserve healthy pulp, they might miss a small section of infected pulp, which can require a root canal retreatment.

A retreatment works the same way as the initial treatment, but it only seeks to carefully remove the sections that were missed.

Retreatments are very uncommon, as the panoramic x-rays often detect all the canals needing treatment. With their keen eye, your Houston dentist will do all that they can to ensure all of the decayed pulp is removed to prevent a need to return.

Pediatric Dentistry in Houston Does More than Just Cleaning

Children are our future, and making that future bright includes giving them a bright smile!

Bringing your child to a pediatric dentist may seem like a difficult experience, especially if they are fearful of seeing the dentist.

This fear is perfectly understandable, especially if they haven’t gone to the dentist very often or have never been at all. The key to an easy visit to a kids dentist in Houston is starting early and going regularly.

When Should My Child See the Dentist?

Your children should visit the dentist for the first time right after their first tooth appears, but no later than 12 months old.

By starting this early, they will begin to form a relationship with your Houston dentist and see that visits involve non-invasive and pain free checkups.

This helps eliminate the fear of going and maintains a healthy regimen that prevents major diseases and decay from occurring.

As your child grows, your Houston pediatric dentist will increase the array of care that your child receives.

What Sort of Care Do Children Get?

In general, children receive the same care that adults do at the dentist. However, for younger children, there is more of an emphasis on preventative care that does involve an intense amount of work.

As they grow, the checkups will become more thorough to encompass all of the new teeth coming in. Additionally, they may seek to apply a dental sealant to molars as they come in.

Dental sealants help protect the molars against cavities by filling in the grooves on the crown of the tooth, making them easier to brush and clear away bacteria.

X-ray imaging is performed once per year (more often if there is a suspected issue) to get a view of all the teeth and how they are developing.

Monitoring the development of early teeth is very important as they will be setting the stages for the adult teeth that come in later.

A Houston pediatric dentist will use x-ray imaging to see the developing teeth that have not come through the gums yet and determine their course, ensuring they erupt (break through the gums) properly and don’t interfere with adjacent teeth.

If the alignment of new teeth will be a problem, the dentist may advocate for braces or other corrective dental apparatuses. The purpose of these corrective measures is to ensure the adult teeth come in perfectly.

What About if My Child Has an Emergency?

Sometimes accidents do happen and a child’s tooth may get fractured, chipped, or knocked out entirely.

A fractured tooth may require a filling to strengthen it, where an avulsed (knocked out) tooth may be replaced.

When a tooth is knocked out, it can sometimes be saved by preserving it in a container of milk and seeing an emergency pediatric dentist in Houston right away. If it cannot be saved (or possibly not found), the dentist will take other measures to prevent the other teeth from shifting.

Having a complete array of teeth is important, as a missing tooth can change the whole geography of a mouth. Even if it was only a baby tooth that was lost, if it’s still a while before the adult tooth comes in, the other teeth can shift, and the adult tooth will cause problems when it does erupt.

Seeing a Houston Dentist Twice per Year Stops Tooth Decay

Taking care of your oral health is an important aspect of maintaining your overall health. Your teeth, gums, and whole mouth can be indicators of how diseases and medications are affecting your body.

Your teeth need to be cleaned regularly, both at home and by a Houston dentist in the Memorial Galleria area. Cleaning your teeth removes bacteria and plaque, the basis of decay.

What is Decay?

Tooth decay is the most common cause for teeth damage. It is caused by bacteria that has lingered and started wearing away your teeth.

As the bacteria grow, it leaves behind a waste product known as plaque. The plaque provides housing for the bacteria and protects it from the saliva and other bacteria in your mouth (of which there can be hundreds of different kinds).

The best way to remove the plaque is with a professional cleaning at your Houston dentist, but another effective means is to brush your teeth regularly.

If you don’t brush regularly, the plaque will harden to form tartar or calculus within a few days. Tartar is more difficult to remove and it protects the bacteria even more.

While protected by the plaque or tartar, the bacteria is free to feed on the enamel of your teeth, burrowing down into them toward the softer dentin and the even softer dental pulp.

This burrowing and damage to the teeth is tooth decay.

Professional Cleaning for Adults and Kids

Getting a professional cleaning during your dental checkup at your Houston dentist provides the highest quality cleaning you can get.

Your dentist is able to look around and clean tough to see and access areas of your mouth using specialized tools like a concentrated water jet.

If there is any plaque, the dentist will clear it away. The plaque is the most important part to clean so as to remove the bacteria’s safe haven.

When seeing a kids dentist in Houston, they will receive the same high quality cleaning that an adult would. Bringing a child to the dentist regularly (the ADA recommends every six months) helps familiarize them with the procedure and removes fear or anxiety.

Unless there is a major problem, the dentist will only want to perform a painless checkup, cleaning, and perhaps apply dental sealants to protect teeth from cavities.

Finding a dentist that is centrally located in the Tanglewood area of Houston that can take care of all your family dentistry needs makes going to the dentist that much easier.

Building a Relationship with a Houston Dentist

Your dentist wants you and your family to be healthy. The best time to visit the dentist is before a problem arises.

By getting regular checkups, you will be actively preventing tooth decay and gum disease from taking hold.

Of course, it’s still important to maintain a healthy routine of brushing and rinsing at home, but it is also critical to have a professional checkup at least twice per year.

This is especially for children seeing a pediatric dentist in Houston. Many children fear seeing the dentist, but by building a relationship early on with regular, non-invasive and pain free visits, they will feel comfortable with going to the dentist.

Should a problem arise later in their life, they may not be as apprehensive about getting it looked at and treated.

Pediatric Dentists’ Secret to Teaching Oral Hygiene

Pediatric care requires a special touch that not every dentist has the qualifications for.

Children need to feel at ease at the dentist office, and when visiting a dentist for the first time, they likely don’t want to get right to fixing a broken tooth.

Instead, an easy introduction to the dental staff and office helps them to familiarize themselves with the environment, exploring it and seeing that the people there care just as much about them as their family does.

Encouraging Children to Practice Good Oral Hygiene

Children like to learn, though it may not always seem that way. The reason is that they like to learn their way.

Oftentimes this means exploring the world around them and doing whatever they can to interact with what fascinates them at any given moment.

Simply telling a child how to properly brush their teeth may not instill the value or captivate their attention well enough to grasp and adhere to it.

Instead, helping a child learn through play, as in finding a way for them to learn while having fun and enjoying it, is the key to instilling good habits.

When visiting a kid’s dentist in Houston, they need that kind of interactivity to help them learn in a way that engages them.

Showing them how to brush teeth using a model and over-sized toothbrush teaches them a skill but in a way where they may feel like it’s a game.

Show them all the spots to get, encourage them with congratulatory speech when they accomplish a goal, and don’t chastise if they don’t have it quite right.

Making learning fun is one way that pediatric dentists can get children to maintain healthy teeth and gums well into adulthood.

Don’t Play on Fears

If a child needs to visit the dentist for a procedure such as getting a filling, avoid using language that may cause fear, such as “drill” or “cavity.”

Instead, focus on the positives of visiting the dentist. Things like “The dentist will make your tooth stop hurting” and “When you’re done, your teeth will be even stronger!” will go a long way toward boosting their confidence.

Using Familiar Imagery to Relate to the Child

Find some way to relate a procedure to terms the child understands. For example, if a child loves superheroes, a parent could say “The dentist is giving your tooth a suit of armor like Iron Man” instead of telling them that they’re getting a filling.

Or perhaps “A dental crown makes one tooth the king/queen of your other teeth” to use a fantasy reference.

Talking to the child in terms they understand helps them to understand what is happening or what will happen. They can better process the real situation in this manner.

Certainly, as a child gets older, usually into their teens, these methods may no longer be as helpful, but parents can still encourage their child with reminders that the dentist wants to help relieve pain and prevent it from returning.

Reinforce Habits with Repetition

It’s not enough to just teach a child a good habit, even if it is taught in an engaging way.

Repetition is the key to them remembering and following through with it. As a baby, keep up with brushing their teeth for them.

When they are old enough to brush their teeth themselves, do it alongside them. As long as they keep up a constant routine of brushing, flossing, and rinsing, it will ingrain the habit into their minds, and it will become second nature.