Pinhole Surgical Rejuvenation: Why You Want this Procedure

We provide patients with Pinhole Surgical Rejuvenation, a modern way to treat gum disease. If you are suffering from gum disease or gum recession, you should visit our dental office right away so we can examine and treat you. The health of your gums is critical to the overall health of your mouth, so once they become diseased, you are likely to suffer additional infections, more tooth decay, and discomfort in general. If left untreated, gum recession can also lead to infected roots, loose teeth, and even tooth loss. In general, this is problematic, but few realize how significantly gum disease can impact their teeth. Studies have found that the majority of those suffering from adult tooth loss also suffered from gum disease, so the two are very much connected.

Start With a Deep Cleaning

If you have gum disease, you need to begin your treatment course by removing what is causing the disease in the first place: plaque and tartar. When it becomes trapped under your gums, plaque will irritate them to the point of causing your gums to bleed, become swollen and inflamed, and even recede. Removing the plaque with a deep cleaning will allow your gums to begin to heal. Traditional dentist offices do this using metal dental tools. We, however, find this to be uncomfortable and invasive, so we use laser dentistry instead. This is a far more comfortable and convenient way to eliminate the built-up plaque.

Restore Your Gum Tissue Using Pinhole Surgical Rejuvenation

Once clean, it will be time to restore your gum tissue. If it has already begun to recede or pockets have been created in the gum tissue, you may need to take drastic measures. Typically, this is done by suturing tissue from the roof of your mouth or a separate tissue donor to your existing gums. Once the gums are augmented, they can be secured back around the tooth or teeth so they are protected once more. This process is important for protecting your roots and the base of the tooth, but it is uncomfortable, even painful. During the procedure, you will be given anesthesia, but you will be incredibly sore afterward and for several days.

We leverage technology to provide you with a better way to restore your gums. Pinhole Surgical Rejuvenation is the best way to do so because we do not need to do any cutting or suturing. This is a non-invasive, non-surgical procedure that allows you to receive the results you need without pain or discomfort — a true win/win. The procedure works by making small pinhole size holes in the gum tissue and then inserting a special tool that is so small and tiny, you will barely feel anything. We can then stimulate the gums and nudge them back in the right position. The gum tissue responds incredibly well to the procedure and will start to protect your teeth and roots like it should. The results are dramatic when you consider that your gums can be restored without the use of surgery. To learn more about the process, call our office and schedule a consultation.

Preventing Further Gum Recession

Gum recession also referred to as gingival recession, is an aesthetically unpleasing condition in which the gum lines begin to recede and pull away from the teeth, resulting in root exposure and an elongated tooth surface. It is an embarrassing condition for most patients who feel it affects their overall appearance negatively, and it can also cause discomfort and sensitivity. In some cases, untreated gum recession can lead to dental caries in the root area if it is not already present. Receding gums can also eventually cause tooth loss. If you currently have receding gums that are not infected or currently inflamed due to gum disease, you may be able to prevent further recession with gentle care and a few tips.

First, you should know what the exact causes of gum recession are. Some causes are preventable while others, sadly, are not. One that cannot be avoided is age. Over 85% of adults over 65 years of age presently have gum recession, while only about 50% of adults between the ages of 18 and 65 are currently affected. Gingival tissue weakens with age so you should brush more gently and continue to seek out regular dental care as you age. Another unavoidable cause of gingival recession is the inherited disposition for it. Outside of these cases, gum recession usually develops due to poor or overzealous dental care. Failing to brush and floss regularly can result in gum disease and recession while brushing too hard can also cause your gums to recede.

If you currently have malpositioned teeth and gum recession as a side effect, it is never too late to receive orthodontic treatment that could be beneficial to your dental health. Having your teeth straightened will take extra stress off of delicate soft tissues and allow you to clean your teeth and gums better without harming them. If your teeth are generally straight, these other tips may help you avoid further gum recession:

Proper brushing and flossing habits including cleaning with a gentle yet firm circular motion and flossing twice daily without pushing the floss too roughly against your gums.

Get fitted for a night guard that may decrease pressure and abrasion on your gums while you sleep. Many people grind their teeth and clench their jaws while they sleep which results in excessive wear on the gum tissues.

Avoid biting your nails or chewing on pens and pencils. This can be abrasive to your gums, causing recession, and it introduces germs into your mouth that could lead to infection.

Invest in a soft bristle toothbrush.

Consider treatments that will help replace missing gum tissue like gum grafts. Added gum tissue may help protect your tooth roots, decreasing the chance for infection and discomfort, and it could improve your overall appearance.

In addition to these simple tips, don’t forget to keep up with regular visits to your dentist. The better we get to know your individual situation, the more confidently we can recommend helpful strategies to reduce the progression of gum recession.

Oral Surgery and Correcting Your Jaw

Corrective jaw oral surgery is a common procedure used to address problems or irregularities with the jaw or teeth. Performed by an oral surgeon, it can be an effective way to improve both your health and your appearance. Not all dentists perform the procedure, so if you have any of the symptoms below, we encourage you to schedule an exam and consultation with our dental office.

Corrective jaw surgery is often performed when these signs are present:

• Difficulty chewing
• Facial imbalance
• Injury to the face or jaw
• An open or severely misaligned jaw
• Soreness or pain in the jaw, face, or neck
• Unnatural wear on the teeth
• Birth defects
• Sleep apnea
• Chronic mouth breathing

If you have any of these issues, you may need oral surgery to correct them. Whether or not you do will depend on how uncomfortable they make you and what we find during your examination. We use modern solutions and advanced dental technology to promote minimally invasive procedures, so if you qualify for any of them, we will let you know. Our goal is to provide you with the solution you need, in the least invasive manner possible.

Working With Your Dentist

As an oral surgeon, many of our patients come to us from other local dentists or orthodontists. While they do a wonderful job keeping teeth healthy or straightening them, they are typically not an expert in surgery where we are. Visiting our office for a surgical procedure does not mean that you will no longer see your favorite dentist. They will continue to spearhead your overall treatment, while we will focus on this narrow aspect of it. The same is true when working with local orthodontist offices. They continue to straighten teeth using braces or aligners, but patients come to us at some point during the total treatment to have surgery complete. We take the team approach because that is what will give you the best possible results.

Recovering From Oral Surgery

Jaw surgery is a surgery just like any other. There will be a set recovery period where you will need to be careful. What you eat, how you eat, and even how you move your jaw will be impacted for several days. Give yourself time to heal by taking a few days off work or planning your surgery around a holiday or preset vacation. You will want to take it easy physically, eat soft foods, and not yell or aggressively move your jaw. We will keep an eye on you during your recovery period by having you come in for checkups. Slowly, you will be able to eat everything again, and then you can benefit from improved health and appearance. If you are working with an orthodontist, once the jaw surgery is complete, they are likely to want to put the braces back on so they can continue forward with your treatment plan.

To find out if you are a candidate for oral surgery or to learn more about the process, call and schedule a consultation.

High-Tech and Beauty Merge in Dental Implants

Dental implants are considered to be the most scientifically modern and essentially natural way of replacing teeth that have been lost. Many people of all ages suffer from tooth loss. In younger folks, this lost tooth typically happens because of an accident, during sports, or some other activity. For older folks, tooth loss is a more gradual process as age and often, disease take their toll on the mouth, eventually costing the person their teeth. The challenge is that nobody should have to live with lost teeth, and with dental implants, nobody will. Losing your teeth may sound more innocuous than it actually is. When you lose your teeth, the very first thing you lose with them is your sense of self. Lost teeth make people more self-conscious and unwilling to smile as much. Then you discover how hard it is to eat all but the softest of foods without teeth. Sooner or later, your gums will harden and you can gum all kinds of food, but it is not quite the same. Finally, language enunciation and pronunciation depends on teeth. These are drastically affected by tooth loss as well. Dental implants are the solution to this kind of tooth loss; here is more information about them.

When you get a dental implant placed, you are getting a two-part system. The first part is what you see on top of the tooth. This is also called a dental crown. Dental crowns are often placed without a dental implant to replace damaged or broken enamel on natural teeth. This is because dental crowns look and feel like a natural tooth, so they blend in with your other teeth. Made of porcelain, they are extremely long-lasting, so you do not have to keep getting replacements. The dental crown is placed on the dental implant and attached to it using an abutment. The dental implants themselves are tiny cone-shaped objects screwed directly into your jawbone for maximum stability. The flat surface is where the abutment is used to attach the dental crown. With dental implants, once they are placed, you no longer have to worry about them falling out, having to clean them some special way, or using attachment devices to replace them. Just like your natural teeth, they are there to stay.

The most important thing about dental implants, other than their permanence, is the fact that you do not have to worry about taking them out or other hassles associated with dentures and bridges. Cleaning them is a breeze, too. All you have to do is clean your teeth and mouth the same way you would clean your natural teeth. Brushing twice per day, rinsing after meals, using mouthwash, and flossing are all ways to make sure the dental crown on the top of your dental implants looks great and that the gums are also kept healthy. Remember, the porcelain crown and the titanium dental implants cannot sustain diseases or decay, but the mouth around them can.

Implant Dentist  >  Oral Surgery

We Specialize in Placing Dental Implants

As a dental implants specialist, we are extremely proud to be part of a technological advancement that is changing the conversation in regard to tooth loss.

With dental implants we can give you new teeth that:

#1 Look Natural

#2 Act Like Your Old Teeth

#3 Remain Securely in Place

For too long tooth loss led to wires, dental cement, and gooey adhesives, all of which were used to hold their new fake teeth in place. With the introduction of dental implants, we can give you the option to replace the lost tooth with one that looks, feels, and functions exactly like the original. Even more impressively, dental implants replace the lost root of the tooth in addition to the visible surface, known as the crown. For many people, this revolutionary new way of replacing teeth has led to questions. Our patients want to know how long dental implants typically last, the procedures involved in placing a dental implant, and whether or not they are eligible to take advantage of implants.

Schedule a Consultation

All of this and more are discussed during our initial consultations. For anyone considering dental implants, you should know that almost anyone can get them. There are a few restrictions that you should be aware of since dental implantation requires oral surgery and is performed by an oral surgeon or periodontist. In order to get dental implants, you will need to be healthy enough to get oral surgery. There are also a few conditions and habits that preclude you from getting dental implants, something you will discuss at length with your dental implant specialist. It is imperative that you tell your dentist all of your medical conditions, any medications you may be taking (including herbal or other non-traditional medication), and habits that you may have, like smoking or consuming alcohol.

Our Success Rates

Success for a dental implant specialist is measured in the number of decades you successfully use your dental implant, not years. Typically, dental implants have a very high success rate, with some national statistics placing the success rate around 98%. Even with more conservative estimates of 92% - 94%, you have a very good chance that the prosthetics placed by your dental implant specialist will last 20 or more years. Achieving this is not an accident -  we carefully prepare you for the process, taking every precaution to ensure that there are no hindrances that may cause the implant to fail. While this is often time-consuming, it is necessary for success. Your journey toward having implants will begin with an extremely comprehensive examination to determine the overall health of your mouth. We will use dental imaging like X-rays and CT scans to make sure that your jawbone has enough density to withstand and support the implant.

For some patients, we can proceed directly to the implant stage directly after the exam, which is known as an immediate implant placement. If we discover that your jawbone does not have the density it requires, we may need to perform an alveolar bone graft, which targets the upper portion of the jawbone where the teeth are usually found. This onlay bone graft can create a block of jawbone that is dense enough to successfully place the implant, and it only requires around six months of healing before we can proceed to the next stage.

Cosmetic Dentist: Common Questions

As a cosmetic dentist, we specialize in restorations and complex procedures.  We also work with general dentists that send patients to us for additional services.  In general, people want to know several things when they come to see us. Typically, this includes knowing how long before their teeth look perfect, how much it is going to cost, and what we can do to speed this process along. While these are great questions and we will be happy to answer them in person, there are other questions we also love getting from our patients. These are often patients who are not sure about getting their teeth straightened or whitened, patients who have trouble with the idea of braces at an older age or just cannot understand why cosmetic dentistry is such a fundamental part of dentistry as a whole these days.

What is the correct age to get my teeth straightened?

From the perspective of a cosmetic dentist, the answer to that question is whatever age you want. There was a time when people were more concerned about social norms and would not straighten their teeth at adults. Those days are long gone. Today, the majority of patients a cosmetic dentist sees are adults. That is because when you are an adult, you truly realize the worth of a cosmetic dentist and understand how important it is to have straight, beautiful, perfectly white teeth. This made it so we had to change and the industry to adapt. We are literally best placed to serve adults who want to improve their smile, as well as their kids' early in life.

Should I be concerned about teeth whitening harming my teeth?

We prefer if you visit a cosmetic dentist, to do your teeth whitening. This is not because the teeth whitening that you can buy in a box over the counter has anything wrong with it, but because when you are in our dentist chair, it is a carefully controlled environment that allows us to do a perfect job. To be clear, as a cosmetic dentist, we know that teeth whitening will never ruin your teeth. However, overuse of over-the-counter products can, and often will, make your teeth far more sensitive, which could result in needing other dental services. The best and most effective way to get your teeth whitened is to come in and see a cosmetic dentist.

Isn’t cosmetic dentistry expensive?

Like many things in life, the answer to that question is, it depends. There are much cheaper and innovative solutions that are now used extensively to reduce costs and still give you the same effects. Things like dental veneers have become a staple in the tools your cosmetic dentist uses to give you straighter, whiter, and better-looking teeth. There are expensive procedures in cosmetic dentistry, there is no denying that. The point is this: you have complete control over how much you spend and how much work you have done at any one time. We are very happy to work out a long-term plan based on your budget and objectives. At the end of the day, a perfect smile doesn’t really have a cost - it’s priceless.

Why You Should Consider Visiting an Oral Surgeon

Many people consider oral surgery to be a drastic step and are often alarmed when their dentist suggests that they need to meet with and get treated by an oral surgeon. The reality is, there are numerous issues that cannot be dealt with by your regular dentist. When you have a condition like TMJ, impacted teeth, facial pain, or any number of other problems, you will need to get oral surgery. Oral surgeons even treat things like tumors from oral cancer and can also perform cosmetic facial surgery to improve the appearance of your smile. With the wide range of conditions that are corrected with oral surgery, you should not be alarmed or concerned if your dentist wants to refer you to an oral surgeon to deal with a particular issue.

Oral surgery is often a confusing term for patients, who look at everything in layman’s terms. For example, what is the difference between getting a root canal and having to remove your impacted wisdom teeth, other than the fact that one is done by your dentist and the other requires the services of an oral surgeon? This is exactly the same as in medicine when some simple procedures can be done by your general practice doctor, while other procedures need to be dealt with by a surgeon. The most common oral surgery procedures are removing impacted teeth and getting dental implants placed.

Impacted wisdom teeth are one of the most common problems that adults across the country have to deal with. Impacted wisdom teeth have to be removed using oral surgery. For most adults, their wisdom teeth appear much later than the other teeth. Since these are the third molars, there has to be enough room in the mouth and the jaw to allow the teeth to come in. Unfortunately, most times, the teeth do not have the room to come in straight or completely out of the gum. This is considered impacted and can have a significant and damaging effect on the teeth around the impacted wisdom tooth. Oral surgery can remove the teeth, preventing damage to the surrounding teeth and often relieving pain and swelling.

Another common reason for getting oral surgery is to replace lost or badly damaged teeth with dental implants. Dental implants are an excellent alternative to dentures or bridges for people who have lost their teeth. A tiny titanium screw is placed into the jawbone to act as the support for a fake tooth that is placed above the gum line. The new fake tooth is called a dental crown. Dental implants are extremely successful, very permanent, and last a very long time, but they do require oral surgery to place since they are surgically inserted into the jawbone. Often, people who have suffered bone loss in their jaw must have the bone replaced or augmented with oral surgery.

An oral surgeon is trained and skilled in the use of anesthesia to help make any procedure you get comfortable and as painless as possible.