Most Common Dental Procedures

By okaygrace, 17th Jun 2012 | Follow this author | RSS Feed | Short URL http://nut.bz/18vco1qp/
Posted in Wikinut>News>Science

Do you hate going to the dentist? Here are a list of the most common dental procedures so that you can learn to not be afraid of them!

Main

I'm sure you have heard or even said the saying "everyone hates the dentist" at some point in your life. What you may not have heard though is that good dental health is extremely important for maintaing a good overall healthy body. In fact, as more and more is learned, poor dental health is being linked to cardiovascular problems and a wide variety of bacterial infections throughout the entire body.

Perhaps the dentist is not such a bad guy after all?

Keeping that in mind, in order to maintain good dental health, most people visit their dentists twice a year for regular checkups and cleanings. In addition to that, there are a number of procedures that dentists may also perform on their patients in order to make sure they have good dental health.

So what are these procedures and what do they entail?

Below you will find a list of some of the most common dental procedures other than cleaning and checkups that dentists perform:

Tooth Extraction

While it can be necessary to extract teeth due to decay and infection, the most common reason for extractions are due to crowding or impaction of the wisdom teeth. By performing a tooth extraction, you will be able to get rid of problem teeth without letting them affect the rest of your mouth.

Dental Fillings

When a tooth has signs of decay or trauma, a filling is usually necessary to fix the problem. The dentist will first address the problem by repairing the tooth as best as possible, and then fill the treated section with a composite mixture to help restore the surface of the tooth.

Root Canal

All teeth have nerve tissue attached to the tooth. Due to a trauma or infection, this nerve tissue can sometimes be damaged. If this occurs, the dentist will need to remove the nerve tissue before it dies completely and in turn allows the tooth to die as well.

A root canal is performed by drilling into the tooth and removing all of the nerve tissue. Once it has been removed, the dentist uses a filling in order to seal and protect the tooth from further problems.

Crowns, Bridges and Bonding

Dental crowns, or caps, are used to cover and protect damaged or decayed teeth. Bridges are used when the patient is missing one or more teeth. A bridge is basically molded material that is placed into the gap caused by the missing teeth, and is held in place by neighboring teeth.

Both crowns and bridges are fabricated in a dental laboratory based on a mold that is taken of the patient’s teeth. It generally is a somewhat complex process that takes multiple dentist visits.

The process involves first obtaining a mold of the patient's teeth. The mold is then sent to a laboratory so that a replacement can be fabricated out of a composite material. The patient then needs to come back and have the replacement affixed to their teeth with cement in order to hold it into place.

Dental bonding addresses the same issues that crowns and bridges do, but they are much quicker, cheaper and unfortunately slighly less durable as well. That is why it is generally used on less severely damaged teeth. Unlike crowns and bridges, bonding can be completed in one visit by simply having a resin material applied to the affected teeth and then exposing it to a high-intensity light to allow the tooth to harden permanently.

Conclusion

Now that you have learned about some of the most common dental procedures, it is important to make sure you have a highly qualified dentist that you can go to.

While there are easily thousands of dentists and dental practices in the United States, not all are created equal. If you are located within Fairfax, Virginia, you will probably not find a more qualified dentist than Dr. Joseph Dehyar of Fair Lakes Dental. Dr. Dehyar has been recognized as one of America’s top dentists by the Consumer’s Research Council of America for 2009, 2010, and 2011 and specializes in a wide variety of simple and complex dental procedures. For more information, you can visit http://www.myfairlakesdentist.com/