At East Quarter Dental, we value the oral health of our patients. While there are many ways to take care of your smile at home, nothing compares to visiting our Dallas dental office. Visiting the dentist for regular dental cleanings and exams every six months is necessary for the best dental health.
Keep up with brushing and flossing at home, and visit us for preventive dental care will go a long way. Our dental hygienist goes above and beyond to keep your mouth in good health. We also provide comprehensive dental services for our patients in Dallas, Texas. Continue reading to learn about the preventative services we provide for all patients.
Our General Dental Services
East Quarter Dental provides common preventive care treatments to keep your oral health in the best condition. Along with dental exams and cleanings, we provide fillings fluoride treatments, emergency dental care, and sedation dentistry.
Teeth Cleanings
In-office teeth cleanings will ensure you don’t have to spend much time at our office in the long run. During a teeth cleaning, our dental hygienist will remove plaque that your at-home oral hygiene routine can’t remove.
No matter how well you take care of your teeth, plaque can be pesky and hard to remove without help from a dental professional. Unattended plaque can result in tough tartar, tooth cavities, and dental disease. We want to make sure you successfully avoid this! Visiting us for teeth cleanings twice per year will help prevent these dental problems and more.
So, what is tartar? When you leave plaque on your teeth for too long, it will harden into tartar. Tartar creates a perfect place for oral bacteria to hide, turning sugars in the food you eat into acid. These acids eat away at your enamel, and can eventually lead to cavities and gum disease.
However, our dentists can successfully remove any tartar you may have. If it has been a while since you have visited a dentist, the chances of having some tartar in your mouth will be higher. Luckily, this is nothing to worry about as long as you visit us to remove it.
Dental Fillings
Our downtown Dallas dental practice offers dental fillings as part of our restorative service for cavities and oral infections. Dental fillings can also repair broken and cracked teeth because of excessive wear. If you have never had this type of treatment before, don’t worry! The process is simple and will leave your teeth as good as new and ready for everyday use again.
Cavities can range in size and even destroy an entire tooth without quick treatment. Exposing your teeth to acidic foods often can increase the likelihood of cavities. This will eventually result in requiring dental fillings. Our downtown Dallas dentist will begin by numbing the area surrounding your affected teeth with a local anesthetic.
This will ensure that you feel no pain or discomfort during the procedure. Next, the dentist will remove the decayed portion of your tooth. We will examine the area and make sure we remove all the decay or infected pulp from your tooth. If all is determined to be well, your dentist will move forward with the filling.
The filling process will begin with cleaning out the leftover bacteria from the tooth’s root. If the infection happens to have reached close to the root of the tooth, your dentist will place a liner in the root to protect the nerve. This liner will generally consist of a composite resin or another protective material.
Once the dentist prepares the tooth, he can place the filling. We can place many types of fillings, including composite resin and amalgam fillings. Composite fillings are more popular because they are the color of teeth, look natural, and blend in with your surrounding teeth. Most patients choose to go the composite route for these reasons.
You may be wondering what life will be like after getting a filling. At first, you may experience some unusual sensations in your tooth, but this is normal and will fade over time. Some examples of feelings patients have are sensitivity to cold foods, sweet foods, or cold air.
You should not experience pain, and if you do, it is possible that your filling is too tall. Our downtown Dallas dentist can easily fix this if this is the case. If you are having pain or discomfort after two weeks, while uncommon, there are a few possibilities:
- We may need to use a different material.
- We may need to add a liner.
- Our dentist may need to add a desensitizing agent.
- The filling may be too deep.
Our dentist can easily resolve all these quick fixes. If you are having issues following your filling, it is best to contact our office promptly to have it looked into and repaired.
If you take proper care of your newly-filled tooth or teeth, they can return to their natural look and function. Fillings are also able to aid in protecting against future cavities and disease.
We recommend taking care of your filled teeth just as you would care for your natural teeth. Practice plenty of brushing and flossing, and visit us bi-yearly for hygiene appointments and dental checkups!
Preparing for Your Visit
To prepare for your visit, we recommend you keep up with your routine oral hygiene practices at home. If you brush and floss before your appointment, it will be easier for our dental hygienist to focus on the serious aspects of the cleaning.
During your visit, our Dallas dental hygienist will place an apron to protect your clothes from accidental messes. The appointment will involve scraping any lingering tartar from your teeth and polishing them.
Polished teeth make it more difficult for plaque to build up on them in the future. Then, your hygienist will thoroughly brush and floss your teeth in addition to giving you a fluoride treatment if you desire one.
A fluoride treatment will protect your teeth from cavities for months to come. The dentist will brush the fluoride onto your teeth, and wait thirty minutes to let it set in before brushing it off. During these thirty minutes, you should not eat or drink anything, as it may disrupt the process of the fluoride.
When ready, contact our Dallas dental office for routine dental exams, cleanings, emergency care and more. Our downtown Dallas dental team cannot wait to assist you. Call us at 469-529-5401 have any questions, or request an appointment online anytime!