General Information
What cause dental decay?
The number one problem in dentistry, by far, is dental decay or “holes in teeth”. Dentists all over the world are filling holes every single day and 99.9% of all people would have at least one hole in their life time. So, it’s no surprise that the million dollar question is “ what causes dental decay?”
How removing teeth causes a deep bite
I strongly believe that every picture tells a story and if we pay enough attention, we’ll see that devil is in the details. Recently I saw a patient who reminded me of the blog I wrote not so long ago about the consequence of tooth loss. She had a few teeth removed many years ago but never got around to replacing them. The change in her mouth occurred slowly that it was difficult to recognise from day to day. Looking at the photos below, a story emerges.
What is capping?
In the last post, I talked about how cracks in teeth can have catastrophic effect on teeth. They’ll either break or split teeth. A natural next question would be: what can we do about it? When I said “capping”, I found out that a lot of my patients don’t know what it is and how it prevents them from potential consequences of cracked teeth.
Broken tooth: a warning sign
In the last blog I mentioned that I spent my time fixing a lot of broken teeth. I got curious after writing and went back to look over photos of my patients’ broken teeth. In the past month, I saw patients almost everyday whom I fixed their broken teeth for and below are their photos. They are extremely common.
Cracked tooth – the slient killer
50 years ago, when dental drills became available, the landscape of dentistry changed. Instead of taking decay teeth out and replaced with removable dentures, we repaired teeth. This means that the rotten part of teeth were cleaned out and filled in with materials, at the time it was silver-coloured amalgam. As the years go by, it became widely expected that we’ll keep our teeth until we’re old.
A time bomb in your teeth
In the past, it’s a common practice that patients visit dentists when they are experiencing pain or they have noticed a hole in their teeth. To me, this behaviour doesn’t make sense. If all patients turn up only when they have pain, then every dental visits will always be painful and unpleasant. But no one wants an unpleasant dental experience. What a catch-22…
Do you have a crossbite?
A luxury of being a dentist is that I get to see patients of all ages. What continues to fascinate me is the opportunity to see the same oral condition in different mouths at different ages. This gives me a clearer picture of the future consequence if the problem in the mouth is left untreated. I would like to take you through a journey of one. It’s called a crossbite…
Gum treatment FAQs
As I pointed out in the previous blog, gum diseases are caused by bacteria around the gum. So the solution to this problem is to remove bacteria. A dentist’s job is to remove hard deposit while the patient’s job is to remove the soft plaque that build up every day so that it doesn’t sit around long enough to become hard.
Gum diseases… what is it?
Previously, I explained the significance of gum diseases and what can happen if left untreated. In this post, I would like to help patients understand what gum disease is because medical terms such as gingivitis often leave people confused. Gum diseases always involve bacteria…
It’s not “just a clean”
On any given day, I would turn up at my practice and look at my appointment book. It’s not uncommon to see a new patient booking in for a ‘clean of their teeth’. After talking to many of these patients, the majority haven’t had professional cleaning done by a dentist for many years, even though they have an impression they probably need one. The tragic thing in my opinion is that they had been told by a dentist in the past that they have ‘gum disease’ but none of them understood what it was, why do they have them or what can be done about it.