Patient Education

Periodontal disease is an infection of your gum tissue, usually caused by poor oral hygiene habits. If brushing and flossing is not done at least twice a day, and you’re not visiting your dentist for checkups and professional cleanings twice a year, plaque will build up on the teeth and eventually harden.

Gum disease, also known as periodontal disease or periodontitis, is a bacterial infection that inflames the soft tissue around your teeth and becomes more severe if left untreated. Over time, gum disease will erode the bone that supports your teeth, leading to tooth mobility and loss.

Getting your braces off is definitely a cause for celebration. You can finally enjoy your new smile after all that work and effort! But getting your braces off isn’t the end of treatment. Once your braces come off, you will enter the retention period of treatment.

Your mouth is essentially the gateway to your body. Poor or good oral health has a direct impact on your systemic health, and if your systemic health is afflicted by disease, this in turn has an impact on your oral health.

While a loose baby tooth is perfectly normal, a loose adult tooth is something to be concerned about. Painful and unpleasant, a loose permanent tooth may fall out, need extracting, or cause serious bite problems.

An implant can lose attachment to the bone, even after it has successfully fused to it.

Cosmetic gum surgery, or gum contouring, can solve a variety of cosmetic issues relating to the proportions of your teeth and your gums.

Losing teeth can cause discomfort and difficulty eating and speaking, but it also can negatively affect our jawbone.

Your dentist is an expert in protecting your oral health. In addition to providing preventive care, they diagnose and treat the teeth, gums, mouth, and jaw.

Sometimes it can be difficult to detect exactly where pain in your mouth is coming from. And with the combination of symptoms you’re experiencing, it may be even harder to decipher which oral complication could be happening.

Clear aligners are a popular and effective way to straighten teeth – without the look or hassle of traditional braces.

Clear aligners are a popular alternative to metal braces, and are a great, discrete way to correct minor misalignment of the teeth.

Bruxism is the medical term for excessive tooth grinding and/or jaw clenching. Because our jaw muscles are capable of producing hundreds of pounds of force, continuous grinding and clenching can cause significant damage to teeth and jaws without dental intervention.

As you know, your dentist recommends fluoride toothpaste because fluoride prevents cavities. Fluoride bonds with the calcium and phosphate ions in our tooth enamel, repairing weak spots. Even better, this new bond is stronger and more cavity-resistant than enamel alone.

It can be a challenge to get our children to brush, brush well, and brush often. Here are some tips that can help you keep those beautiful little teeth healthy.

Adding an appropriate mouthwash to your dental hygiene routine can be a simple and effective way to improve your overall dental health. Mouthwash helps reduce plaque, control bad breath, and prevents tooth decay and gum disease.

Twice a year when you visit your dentist for a checkup and professional cleaning, you are probably given instructions on proper oral hygiene. This will include brushing and flossing your teeth at least twice a day, using a toothpaste containing fluoride, and using a soft bristled toothbrush.

Cavities are small in size but can cause big problems. In the form of little holes in your teeth, they develop when acid attacks your tooth enamel, the essential protective covering for your teeth.

Teeth grinding and clenching, also called bruxism, is associated with stress and sometimes caffeine and stimulants. As bruxism most often occurs at night, some people may not realize they do it, but the signs and symptoms show in the teeth.

Preventive care is one of the best—and easiest—ways you can maintain your healthy smile for a lifetime. Practicing good oral hygiene helps prevent tooth decay and gum disease. Protecting your teeth helps prevent dental trauma.

Our bodies keep our bones strong by absorbing old bone cells and replacing them with newer and stronger bone material. Osteoporosis is a condition that occurs when we absorb more bone than we replace, resulting in weakened bones.

Oral piercings can be found on the tongue, lip, cheek, or other soft tissue around the mouth. It’s important to consider potential complications stemming from oral piercings so that you can maintain your best oral health.

Nutrition goes hand in hand with oral health. It can affect the speed at which oral diseases may progress. Such diseases include caries, periodontal disease, erosion, cancer, ulcers, and dry mouth.

Tooth loss can be caused by gum disease, deep decay, and trauma. Certain congenital genetic conditions can result in teeth which never develop.

Geographic tongue, also called benign migratory glossitis, is an inflammatory condition in which red patches appear on your tongue resembling continents on a globe.

Eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, can have devastating effects on your health, including your teeth.

Dry mouth, or xerostomia, occurs when the salivary glands can’t produce enough saliva to maintain a healthy oral environment.

Maintaining excellent oral hygiene is important for diabetics, as they have an increased risk of developing oral infection and periodontal disease.

Due to changes in hormones, pregnant women might be more susceptible to oral health conditions, like gingivitis, tooth decay, and pregnancy tumors.

Brushing and flossing at home to keep up your oral health is great, but it’s also important to visit the dentist for checkups and professional cleanings at least twice a year.

If you experience high blood pressure, it’s vital that you discuss possible medications with your health care professionals, including your dentist.

Bad breath is a common condition that can be caused by poor oral hygiene, gum disease, dry mouth, certain foods, or underlying health issues. In most cases, it’s a sign that bacteria are building up in the mouth due to plaque, food particles, or infection.

Our bodies are home to bacteria which are common in our mouths, but which can be dangerous elsewhere. For some people, especially those who have chronic medical conditions, specific cardiac conditions, or whose immune systems are compromised, bacteria that spreads throughout the bloodstream and into the heart can lead to a serious bacterial infection called infective endocarditis.

A tooth that has been structurally damaged by decay or trauma sometimes needs to be crowned or “capped” so that it can look good and function properly again. A crown is a durable covering that is custom-made to fit over the entire tooth from the gum line up.

Lasers direct a controlled force of energy that can remove or alter bone and tissue. By applying varying wavelengths of energy, dental lasers are used to detect and treat a myriad of oral health issues, including detecting oral cancer and treating small cavities.

Using lasers, dentists can detect tooth decay that is not yet visible and would otherwise be undiagnosed using traditional methods.

Dental impressions are bad enough to make anyone avoid the dentist. If you’ve ever needed a crown, bridge, or retainer, then you’ve experienced the discomfort that comes while waiting for the gooey, putty-like material (alginate) to set for a dental impression. Thankfully, there are new ways to obtain dental impressions using digital scans of your mouth.

The single-tooth anesthesia wand provides increased comfort and decreased anxiety when it comes to dental procedures requiring anesthetization. The wand looks like a small pen with an extremely small needle at the tip. The anesthesia wand works by numbing the individual tooth your dentist needs to work on. The device is unique in the way that it delivers a flow of anesthesia all controlled by a computer.

Air abrasion is a drill-less technique that involves an instrument used to blast away small areas of early onset tooth decay, as well as help dentists perform other dental procedures. It is recommended for children or other patients who are fearful of traditional drilling. Air abrasion can only be used if you have minimal decay.

It’s never too late to achieve your perfect smile, and now more than ever, adults are seeking orthodontic treatment. In fact, approximately 25% of orthodontic patients are adults.

It’s important to take good care of your teeth as you age. Elderly patients often need more frequent visits to stay healthy, as they are at a higher risk of oral complications, including extraction, tooth decay, and periodontal (gum) disease.

Orthognathic surgery, also known as corrective jaw surgery, aims to correct abnormalities of the jawbones in order to realign the jaws and teeth to improve overall function. This surgery can also improve the outside appearance of your face.

Blood thinners are a type of medicine that prevents your blood from clotting inside a blood vessel, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke. They can also keep blood clots from forming or getting larger.

A cleft lip and cleft palate are common birth defects that occur in the very early stages of fetal development.

Early orthodontic treatment, also known as interceptive orthodontic treatment, is used to prevent future orthodontic issues. Between the ages of seven and 14, the teeth and jaw are still developing, making them more malleable for effective interceptive orthodontic treatment. Sometimes patients as young as seven years old are able to begin orthodontic treatment, though their candidacy depends on specific conditions of their mouths.

A baby’s teeth are not visible at birth, but already exist underneath the gums. Children's primary teeth begin forming at about the sixth week of pregnancy, and start mineralizing — building the bonelike inner tooth layer (called dentin) and the super-hard enamel layer that covers it — around the third or fourth month of pregnancy.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral essential for proper tooth development.