Common Orthodontic Treatment Options

Straightening your teeth is now more convenient and easier than in the past. New advances in orthodontic technology are now allowing patients to choose from many different systems to suit their needs. Now there’s less physical pressure on the mouth, shorter treatment times, and flexibility with your lifestyle.

Our orthodontist in Torrance can fit you with the right orthodontic treatment for you. Braces in the past were made of stainless steel, attached to the front surfaces of the teeth, and connected with wires. While this option is still available, there are many other convenient options and better-looking ones as well.

The most convenient and probably the most popular option is Invisalign. This system is made of clear plastic aligners that are removable for your convenience. They are worn for most of the day and taken out for eating, drinking, and brushing the teeth. The best part is they are virtually invisible because they are clear. You can smile with confidence knowing that your teeth are being improved without unsightly wires and brackets. As your teeth move and shift into place, the aligners are changed out for new ones. This happens almost weekly.

Another option is ceramic braces. This material is lightweight and resembles the color of your natural teeth. They are much smaller and less noticeable than traditional braces but still get the job done. This is great for people who want to speed up the treatment process as they move the teeth much faster than clear plastic aligners. People with this option must take extra care of their oral hygiene because the brackets can stain easily.

Another great option is lingual braces. These are invisible from the outside because the brackets and wires are placed inside the teeth. They are much like traditional braces in that they can be uncomfortable at first and require regular adjustments. They might also be a little more difficult than traditional braces. With each of these orthodontic treatments, maintaining good oral hygiene is a must. Brushing at least twice a day along with flossing will ensure that your gums and teeth stay healthy while they shift into place.

No matter which option you prefer, talk to our orthodontists about every treatment available to you. We will assess your smile and match you with the appropriate treatment option. Smile with confidence again and schedule an appointment today. 

Signs of Bruxism

Do you clench or grind your teeth? People who do this may have a condition called bruxism. It could happen consciously or unconsciously when you’re awake or during sleep. The sleep form of this order actually might be considered a sleep-related movement disorder such as snoring or sleep apnea. Mild forms of grinding or clenching your teeth do not necessarily require treatment. However some people can have a severe case of this disorder, which can lead to several issues.

It’s good to be aware of the signs and symptoms of this disorder. Signs and symptoms can be teeth grinding and clenching, teeth that are flattened, fractured, chipped or loose teeth, worn enamel, increased tooth pain or sensitivity, tired or tight jaw muscles, jaw, neck or face pain, dull headache, damage to the inside of your cheek from chewing, and sleep disruption. Talk to our dentists if you have these symptoms or other concerns about your teeth.

There are certain factors that may increase your risk of this disorder such as stress, age, personality type, medications and other substances, family members who clench or grind their teeth, and other disorders. Our experts can determine if you are clenching and grinding your teeth during a routine exam. They may check for tenderness in your jaw muscles, broken or missing teeth, and other damage to your teeth examined with the help of x-rays.

There are certain treatment options available such as splints and mouth guards. These keep a barrier between the teeth by separating them to avoid clenching and grinding. In severe cases when the teeth have been worn down or there is inability to chew, our dentist may need to reshape the surfaces of your teeth or use crowns to repair the damage. In many cases, treatment isn’t necessary. There are many adults who don’t clench or grind their teeth badly enough to require treatment. Kids with this disorder often outgrow it.

There are more natural approaches to treating this disorder such as stress or anxiety management, behavior change and biofeedback, which uses monitoring procedures and equipment to teach you to control muscle activity in your jaw. If you believe you have damaged teeth or sensitivity due to clenching or grinding, talk to our dentist. We can examine your mouth over the course of several visits to see if the disorder is progressive, and determine if treatment is necessary.

What is Crown Lengthening?

When a tooth needs to be fixed from breakage or a crown or filling falls out of a tooth, sometimes there is not enough tooth to fix the problem. However there are procedures that can help. A dental professional can talk to you about crown lengthening. This procedure requires a surgeon to remove gum tissue, bone or both to expose more of the tooth that needs to be fixed.

To replace a filling or crown that has fallen out, a dentist needs to expose more of the tooth. Some patients have a “gummy smile” where they have a lot of gum tissue around their upper teeth. This is where the lengthening procedure can help. Our dentist in Van Nuys can walk you through this process so you can decide if it is appropriate for your smile.

The procedure starts with some preparation. First a patient must visit our periodonist where they will review their medical history and x-rays. A date for the surgery can then be scheduled. It may be recommended to get your teeth cleaned before the surgery can be done. A dentist may put on a temporary crown to protect the tooth during this process. This gives the periodontist an advantage because they will be able to see how much soft tissue or bone needs to be removed.

Once a patient is ready for the procedure, a local anesthesia will be used. The length of time it takes for this surgery depends on the number of teeth that need to be fixed. However, most likely more than one tooth will be affected. It could be as simple as removing a little gum tissue to expose the tooth so the dentist can place a crown filling over it. But in most cases some bone will have to be removed around the roots of the teeth. Once the periodontist has enough tooth to work with, the gums are sanitized and then stitched back together. Not to worry, your dental professional can prescribe pain reliever and mouth rinse once this procedure is done.

A patient will go back to the periodontist 7 to 10 days after the surgery to have the stitches removed. After about 4 to 6 weeks, there will be a follow up visit to make sure the gums have healed nicely. Gums heal in about three months. After this time period the dentist can prepare the tooth for the final crown. 

How Dental Bridges Replace Teeth

All people can relate to the experience of losing teeth as a child. Losing teeth as an adult, however, is abnormal, and opens up to a wide range of possible dental and periodontal risks and complications. If you find yourself missing an adult tooth and are uninterested in dental implants, you will be pleased to know that there is another option available to you if the gap is surrounded by one or more remaining real teeth. Dental bridges are an excellent, natural-looking solution that will last you for years if properly maintained.

An open gap where an adult tooth once was has the potential to exert a sinkhole type of effect on the rest of your mouth – the surrounding teeth, with nothing holding them solidly in place, will all begin to drift toward the empty spot, not only changing the way your smile looks, but in some severe cases actually causing the outward appearance of the face itself to degrade and appear sunken in. Aside from that, many patients report more difficulty chewing, speaking, and swallowing after the loss of the tooth. This is due in part to the fact that a missing tooth redistributes the interplay of forces present on the chewing surface of all the teeth.

A bridge is exactly what it sounds like: using the surrounding teeth as leverage, two caps hold between them a false tooth, also called a pontic, firmly in place where the missing tooth once was. Our dentist will evaluate the area and surrounding tissue, sculpt the teeth to be crowned on either side, and take a physical impression with dental putty. After the crowns and the pontic are designed and put in place, the bridge will be checked against the alignment of your bite, adjusted, and permanently affixed to your jaw. In some cases where there is only one tooth available as the anchoring point, a special type of bridge called a cantilever is used. This exception is usually reserved only for molars, which are less easily jarred during day-to-day activity.

With proper care, a bridge will last for well over a decade. Our dentist in San Francisco will keep a close eye on it and you would need to come back in for regular maintenance appointments.

Benefits of Same Day Dental Treatments

With any type of dental restoration comes a significant amount of commitment, both to the treatment, and to the amount of time it takes to properly administer that treatment. Same-day dentistry seeks to alleviate that burden by wasting very little of the patient’s time and streamlining the process as much as possible.

Whitening, bonding, and all types of professional cleaning can technically be categorized as same-day procedures. With many other types of more complex cosmetic dental treatment comes a significant planning period, usually an interval of time between consultation and operation reserved for a dental lab to take your impressions and turn them into your eventual crown, bridge, veneers, or dental implant. This is to ensure a snug, customized fit for each patient which would be completely impossible if the only option was to pull from one or several pre-determined models. Every mouth is different, and the back and forth does pay off in the long run. In more urgent cases where time is limited, however, that extra time is not always available.

There are many tools at our disposal that can help expedite your treatment. Contemporary scanning technology allows our dentists to learn more about your mouth on the day of your initial appointment than ever before. After gathering the necessary information, specs, and measurements about the tooth or teeth, that information will be used to build a digital model of the restorative fixture to be received by the patient, in some cases without even needing to go through the trouble of taking a physical impression. At that point, it’s simply a matter of feeding that information into a specialized 3D printer where your new implant, veneer, or crown will be created on-site and in under an hour.

With this alternative way of planning and performing the procedure, the patient spends less time in the chair and is exposed to anesthesia and local numbing agents the fewest times possible. It also enables our dentist to make choices that enable them to be as precise as possible, often allowing them to remove much less of the original tooth than would otherwise be acceptable using traditional means of restoration alone.

Most patients assume intuitively that the more time goes into the process, the better the results will turn out. This is not necessarily the case; keeping every step of the process so close to home will ensure that our San Francisco dentist has as much control over the outcome as possible. Eliminating that intermediary step between lab and office not only saves you an extraordinary amount of time, but also minimizes the opportunity for accidental mix-ups between patients and clerical errors.