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The American Dental Association has suggested visiting your dentist at least once a year for a routine cleaning and check-up. By regularly visiting your dentist, we are able to spot any trouble early on and prevent bigger and more costly treatments in the future.

Children should have a first dental visit by their first birthday or eruption of the first baby tooth, as advised by the British Society of Paediatric Dentistry. Subsequent timely visits are advised by your dentist. These allow us to keep a check on their dental health, provide dietary and oral hygiene instructions, stop any habits such as thumb-sucking that may be developing and to establish a dentist-patient relationship for positive future treatments or emergencies.

Dentists are able to perform a clinical examination but are not able to see cavities or problems that are in between the teeth or in the bone. The dentist takes lose dose X-rays to gain more knowledge about the dental problems at hand and make an informed decision regarding treatment.

A scale and polish, or hygiene , should be carried out at least once a year. It involves removal of plaque, calculus and stains from the teeth and gums to prevent gum disease, bone loss, and the start of cavities. Normally, the saliva in our mouth, along with bacteria and food, make a sticky layer of ‘plaque’ on the tooth and along the gum. If not removed, this can irritate the gum, causing inflammation, bleeding and sensitivity.  If persists, the plaque can involve the root of the tooth and the bone, causing deterioration of the supporting structure. A regular scale and polish, along with good oral hygiene practice at home can prevent this from happening.

A cavity, or more commonly a known as a ‘hole in the tooth’ is caused by acid that’s produced by bacteria in the mouth. The bacteria feed on refined sugars in the diet such as those found in bakery products, sweets and sugars.

A cavity is usually treated by removing the infected part of the tooth and filling it with a tooth colored material. If the cavity reaches deeper into the nerves and blood vessels, or pulp, of the tooth, a root canal is carried out. This is also known as endodontics. Here, the pulp is cleaned out and the tooth is medicated, followed by placing a crown on the tooth to strengthen it.

The teeth in a child’s mouth, or the primary teeth, start to fall out at 6 years and continue to fall till 13 years of age.  If the cavities in these primary teeth are not treated in time, they lead to pain, discomfort, swelling and poor behaviour from the child on the dental chair. If the tooth is unsalvageable, it causes difficulty in chewing, poor aesthetics, space loss and malocclusion. To avoid these problems, it is advisable to treat the cavity in due time.

There are many options to replace a permanent tooth. Your dentist will decide the best option for you based on your age, the number of teeth to be replaced and your general and dental health. Some of options to replace the missing space include a bridge, a denture or an implant.

Crooked teeth can be a result of habits such as thumb-sucking in younger age, crowding of teeth or having a smaller jaw than usual. To correct these problems, your dentist might advise braces, which can be metal or clear, for your convenience. They may also suggest wearing a removal or fixed appliance in the mouth for some time.

We address all aspects of dental care, including cosmetic. The brightness of your teeth can dull with age, lack of cleaning, or habits such as smoking cigarettes, shisha and having tea, coffee, or wine.  To make them brighter, your dentist might suggest getting ‘whitening’ done. This is the application of a bleaching agent on the teeth which is then activated with a U.V light over a period of time. They may also suggest special toothpastes and formulas found at your local chemist.

We at Park Road Practice are stringent with our cleanliness procedures. All armamentarium is changed and cleaned after each patient. The instruments are sterilized in autoclaves and disinfection protocol is used to clean all surfaces of a dental surgery.

Children Dentistry

This speciality deals with patients from birth till 13 years of age, and those with special needs throughout their life time.  The AAPD advises that a childs first dental visit should be by their first birthday or first tooth eruption. We carry out all forms of dental treatment for our patients at Park Road Practice.

Endodontics

Endodontics is a specialty of dentistry, dealing with tooth pulp and tissues surrounding the root of a tooth. The pulp (containing nerves and blood vessels) can become diseased and die, requiring endodontic treatment.The most common procedure done in endodontics is root-canal therapy, which involves the removal of diseased pulp tissue to remove irreversibly inflamed pulp tissue.  If the pulp tissue becomes infected, the infection can leak out of the tooth’s root and make the surrounding bone ill and painful or cause an abscess to form. Usually, this will require 2-3 visits to your dentist with the use of local anesthetic. Then the pulp chamber and root canals are cleaned and shaped for filling and sealing. Often, an intra-pulpal medicament to inhibit bacterial growth is placed and the tooth is filled with a temporary restoration until the second appointment, where the temporary restoration and medicament are removed and the canal(s) are sealed with gutta-percha–thus completing the procedure.