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Today, we have over 6,000 patients supported by:
- 3 Dentists
- 5 Registered Dental Hygienists
- 5 Clinical Assistants
- 2 Office Personnel
- 1 Practice Administrator
OFFICE HOURS
- Monday - Thursday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Friday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Phones are switched to the answering service at 11:30 on Fridays.
AFTER HOURS AND WEEKENDS
If you are having a dental emergency and need to contact a dentists after hours, on weekends, or holidays, the answering service will take your message and page the dentist on call.
CANCELLATION
If you need to cancel your appointment, please call as early as possible. We would greatly appreciate at least 24 hours notice of cancellation.
APPOINTMENTS
Please make appointments for all visits. If it has been longer than three years since you have seen your hygienist, you will be asked to schedule a comprehensive exam with x-rays.
MEDICATIONS
Each time you come in to the office to see your dentist, please bring all of your medications, or a complete, updated list. The list should include the name, dosage, and frequency of your medicine.
Is it important to verify what medications you are taking at each office visit. This request comes through years of experience caring for patients.
INSURANCE
As a courtesy to you we will file a claim for services with your insurance. However, we are not contracted with any insurance plans. Any amount not payable by your insurance plan is due at the time of service.
If you change insurance companies, please notify us immediately, regardless of when your next appointment is. Please provide us a copy of your insurance card.
X-RAY RESULTS
Our dentists usually write notes or letters to inform patients about routine x-ray results. This typically takes 7-10 days. If you have not heard about your results in two weeks, please call us. Patients with x-ray results that require more urgent attention will be contacted by phone.
Minimizing Future Loss
Tooth loss is always a cause for concern. It impacts everything from your ability to eat to your self-esteem. More importantly, it can be a predictor of a more serious condition. Studies have shown that permanent tooth loss can be an indicator of early dementia.
Dementia is a decline in mental functions that affect a person's quality
of life, such as remembering the names of familiar objects and problems
preparing or eating meals, for example. The severest form of dementia,
Alzheimer's disease, has already been linked to periodontal disease, a chronic
inflammatory oral disease. Researchers are still trying to determine if the link
between dementia and perio is inflammation.
Periodontal disease, or perio for short, sets up an inflammatory response that affects the body as a whole, not just the teeth. Studies show that patients with perio can expect to lose more teeth on a yearly basis as the severity of their infection increases.
That's why, if you have been diagnosed with perio, it is very important
to keep your maintenance appointments. If you have perio, we may need to see you
more than twice a year to manually remove biofilm build up.
Here's another important reason: patients who did keep their maintenance appointments--and who also had good oral hygiene--scored better on mental functioning tests. Good health is cumulative so maintain your oral health to maintain your overall health. If you are concerned about perio issues, give us a call today.
Nothing But The Tooth
Modern technology is all about saving time. You can send an email to Istanbul in the time it takes to send a text message to your 13-year-old daughter. Technology is also speeding up your dental visit when you need a crown or veneers. This miracle of modern technology is called CEREC.
The CEREC CAD/CAM (computer-assisted design, computer-assisted
manufacture) milling machine lets us fit you with a crown or veneer in one
visit.
The CEREC CAD/CAM uses a special camera that emits a blue light designed to greatly increase measurement accuracy. This accuracy allows us to place a crown or veneer with minimum to no adjustments to the piece. Then, the measurements are milled by the CEREC unit into a beautiful crown or veneer.
Before CEREC, we would have first taken an impression of the prepared
tooth and sent it to a laboratory where the crown or veneer was manufactured and
apply a temporary restoration for you to wear during the interim. If the
restoration didn't fit properly, we'd have to send the piece back to the lab for
adjustment. The process could have taken weeks and several more office visits;
whereas, today, you're typically in and out of the chair in less than an hour.
Whether it's to restore your beautiful smile or to repair a back tooth, the CEREC CAD/CAM system provides you with a natural-looking tooth in mere minutes. Join over eight million patients worldwide who have received over twenty million CAD/CAM restorations.
Way To Whiten
Everyone wants a healthy white smile, right? You've got the healthy part down so how can you decide which of the numerous whitening options is right for you?
First, you need to evaluate your needs. Do you have naturally white or
recently whitened teeth that are looking a little dingy? If that's the case, you
need a minor whitening product or treatment.
For minor whitening or maintaining whitening:
1. Whitening toothpastes
2. Foods that 'scrub' teeth and promote whitening like carrots, apples and popcorn
Maybe you have never whitened or you are experiencing color changes due to heavy coffee or tea staining. In that case, you're probably a candidate for medium strength whitening.
For medium strength whitening:
1. 
Over-the-counter tooth whitening kits
2. Whitening strips
For those who have major discoloration due to years of smoking or red wine consumption, you may be in need of major whitening, also called power whitening, performed by a dental professional. Power whitening uses a combination of in-office treatment and at-home treatment to provide intense whitening.
With a little extra care and routine touch-ups at home, your teeth can stay white for many months. If you'd like to better evaluate your whitening needs, give us a call today.
Sugar Shock
You brush, you floss, you use a good oral rinse and yet, you still have cavities. How can that be? One of the first things to examine is the amount of hidden sugar that you are drinking.
Keeping the sugar in your diet low is beneficial for a lot of reasons
but when it comes to your oral health, bathing your teeth in a sugary drink is
like being hit by a tidal wave of acid.
It doesn't matter how 'natural' the sugar is either. 100% fruit juice is just as harmful to your teeth as any artificial fruit punch.
The following drinks should be kept to a minimum or avoided entirely:
1. Soda (even diet sodas have enamel destroying acid)
2. Fruit Juice
3. Sweetened soft drinks like lemonade
4. 
Bottled and fountain iced teas
5. Energy drinks
6. Chocolate and other flavored milk
7. Hot chocolate and chocolate flavored drinks
8. Sweetened flavored 'waters' (Despite the number of vitamins they claim to have)
9. Bottled lattes, cappucinos and coffee drinks
You may now be thinking, 'what's left to drink?' The answer is simple: WATER. Water, unsweetened flavored seltzers, unsweetened teas and black coffee are some sugar-free alternatives to drenching your dentin in decay multiple times a day. Even milk, while containing a kind of sugar known as lactose, is a better option for your teeth than the syrupy sludge listed above.
Okay, so if you absolutely can't get the sugar monkey off of your back, there are ways to minimize the damage. For one, drinking quickly or using a straw to by-pass the teeth can help. Also, you can rinse your mouth with water after a sugary liquid or chew sugar-free or xylitol gum to increase the flow of saliva. However, you should hold off on brushing your teeth until 20 minutes after finishing your drink to allow time for your newly softened and vulnerable enamel to remineralize.
If you need more ideas about foods and drinks to avoid, give us a call to discuss a plan for oral health.
Sore Subject
What's worse than accidentally biting your tongue or inner cheek? The canker sore (apthous ulcer) that can result from that painful bite. Of course, a lot of factors can contribute to getting a canker sore and it's important to know what they are in order to prevent sores.
A canker sore can start out as a tingling or burning sensation; then, it
becomes a painful, small, round or oval, yellow or white open sore surrounded by
a red ring. It can appear on the inside of your cheek, the roof of your mouth,
under your tongue or at the base of your gums.
Although, it can feel like it lasts forever, a normal episode lasts from seven to ten days and completely heals by itself in one to three weeks.
In addition to that painful bite, other numerous things that might trigger a canker include:
1. a food allergy
2. too much of an irritating or acidic food or beverage
3. toothpaste that contains sodium laurel sulfate
4. an immune response
5. a mouth injury from a jagged restoration or ill-fitting dental appliance as well as the aforementioned bite
6. aggressive brushing
7. emotional stress
8. a diet deficiency such as low iron or vitamin B-12
Treatments range from a simple warm salt water rinse to over-the-counter
antiseptic and/or numbing agents made specifically to treat canker sores to
in-office laser treatment.
If a canker sore lasts longer than two weeks, recurs frequently, doesn't respond to pain relief products or comes with a high fever, we need to see you to confirm that it is not a serious condition that needs treatment.
