How can we help you?
Educating our patients about the value of conscientious oral health care is one of our top priorities. When you're informed, it's easier to understand why you need a certain procedure and how it will benefit you.
We encourage and welcome all questions! It's essential for you to be involved with your own care, and your questions help us understand what your expectations are and what's important to you.
Here are a few frequently asked questions to get you started, but you may have others that you don't see listed. In this case, please call our Chattanooga dental office or fill out our handy online contact form.
General Dentistry
I’m going to put this into words most people can understand and not in dental insurance speak. There are basically two types of patients that come to the office for cleanings ( the dental term for that is prophylaxis appointments. We in the biz call those prophy’s) A prophy is for your standard patient that has some build up on his/her teeth, but is generally healthy. In this patient, no bone loss is present, meaning the bone around each tooth is where it should be and the patient doesn’t have much root exposed. On the flip side of the coin, there are those patients who do have bone loss, creating a much deeper place to clean (Again, we in the biz call this a ‘pocket’) People with deep pockets in the presence of bone loss require scaling and root planning, insurance talk for ‘deep cleaning.’
There are many procedures that can be done to teeth with issues that could alleviate the problem. For example, if someone breaks half of their tooth, a really big filling might work. Also, a crown might fix the problem, or someone might determine that a root canal is necessary THEN a crown. Another dentist might say the best thing to do would be get the tooth extracted and get an implant. All of those are viable options with varying costs and time commitments. Depending on the situation, some treatment will be more or less aggressive/conservative with different degrees of longevity.
Think of it like a filling all of the way up or down a tooth root. Basically, something (decay, trauma, etc) has caused the nerve of a tooth to be inflamed and removal of the nerve is necessary. I tend to refer all of my root canals to dentists who specialize in those procedures called ENDODONTISTS and they remove the nerve and fill the canal with an inert material.