Routine Dental Care
an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
"it's easier to stop something from happening in the first place than to repair the damage after it has happened."
Routine Exams
Most cost effective way to approch dentistry
If you are able to have your teeth examined once a year, your dentist can catch small decay early. Early is not only painless but less expensive. Let me explain, Dr. Boag keeps up with the latest tech in early decay detection. With each exam, he uses a tool called a Diagnodent. It is able to catch decay before it beginnings to eat away at healthy tooth enamel. It uses a laser to detect the properties of decay.
So for instants, you could have a brown spot (stain) and it not give any reading on the diagnodent, meaning it's just a stain. There can be a similar stain on the same tooth that can give off a diagnodent reading of 30, which tells us that stain is indeed decayed and some decay doesn't even stain, the diagnodent works surprisingly well to catch those invisible areas as well! These spots caught early are an easy 45min visit to repair and most times you don't even need to be numb for the procedure. It's more of scrubbing away of the decay and sealed with resin ... painless!
Left untreated or not caught due to missed exams, the decay will continue to grow silently until it reaches the nerve that will then cause a toothache, which will lead to a very expensive root canal procedure that will also lead to a crown. This all can be prevented with an annual exam. That's why this is considered preventive treatment with insurance companies and is covered at 100% in most cases.
Dental Hygiene
More important than you think
Several studies have shown that periodontal disease is associated with heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. While a cause-and-effect relationship has not yet been proven, research has indicated that periodontal disease increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.
People with diabetes are more likely to have periodontal disease than people without diabetes, probably because people with diabetes are more susceptible to contracting infections. In fact, periodontal disease is often considered a complication of diabetes. Those people who don't have their diabetes under control are especially at risk.
All that being said, there is a way to kill and manage the periodontal infection in the mouth. Dr. Boag has been doing it for years with his patients with astonishing success. For these patients, their immune systems can finally get a break to recover after the infection has been dealt with.
We don't take your hygiene exam lightly. We screen for all possibilities of underlying infection because it's very important to your overall health. If you're all clear, a thorough basic cleaning is all you'll need.
Dental Fillings
Like tires on your car, they eventually need to be replaced
Think about how long you've had those metal filling in your mouth. Has it been 10, 15, 20+ years? Don't worry that's not uncommon. The great news is an amalgam (silver filling) is way stronger than rubber tires. But the concept is still the same, they eventually need to be replaced.
At every routine exam, Dr. Boag carefully checks each tooth and the restorations that have been done. Just because an amalgam filling was done 15+ years ago doesn't mean it's defective. It just means we need to monitor it to make sure it's still doing its job. And if not, no worries, replacing an amalgam filling is as simple as a routine dental visit and can be completed within 45 mins.
We only perform resin fillings in our office. Resin fillings are chemically bonded to your tooth and create a seal to prevent bacteria carrying saliva to flow underneath the filling, causing new decay.
Adults typically don't get decay if their teeth are properly cared for. But we find old fillings with un-sealed margins allow bacteria carrying saliva to flow underneath these filling and harbor decay where your dentist can't see. It only becomes visible in an X-ray once the decay has become large enough to be detected. So we encourage patients to replace old amalgam fillings with new bonded fillings, but Dr. Boag doesn't push it until he sees signs of cracks and visible decay.
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