Specialty Services in Phoenix, AZ
Why race across town to dentists you don’t know? We provide comprehensive, specialized dental care for your entire family in one familiar place.
There’s so much dentistry can do these days to make your mouth healthier and your smile more beautiful. Yet many people don’t take advantage of this because of a long-standing fear of dental treatment. If you are one of these people, rest assured that it’s possible to have an experience that’s free of anxiety and pain.
There are many elements that make up an ideal smile; bright, healthy-looking teeth immediately come to mind. But the gum tissue that surrounds and supports those teeth also plays a big role in how appealing your smile will look.
When advanced gum disease (periodontitis) develops, your teeth are in danger: At this stage, the ligaments and bone tissue that surround them are being destroyed, and you could even begin losing teeth! If the disease can’t be controlled by non-surgical treatments like cleaning and scaling, then periodontal flap surgery may be your best treatment option.
If you experience ongoing pain in the area near your ear, your jaw or the muscles on the side of your face, possibly accompanied by a clicking or popping sound or restricted jaw movement, you may be suffering from TMD — an abbreviation for Temporomandibular disorders.
Teeth are pretty tough, but they live a high-stress life. We work them hard every day and take them for granted most of the time. Until they break. Fractured teeth are the result of years of chewing and grinding stress. If dental decay or a dental filling has weakened the tooth, the risk of it breaking is even higher.
In many cases, problems with the bite or the alignment of the teeth can be corrected using today’s advanced methods of dental and orthodontic treatment. Sometimes, however, skeletal and dental irregularities aren’t so easy to remedy, even with the most up-to-date non-surgical techniques. That’s when corrective jaw surgery (also called orthognathic surgery) may be recommended.
If gum recession is affecting your health or your appearance, a procedure called gingival (gum) grafting may be recommended. Although it might sound scary, a variety of gum grafting procedures are routinely performed by periodontists (specialists in the area of gingival tissue), and by some general dentists with specialized training in this field.
New software for reading x-rays has greatly improved our ability, at CenterCare, to see early changes in teeth when dental caries (tooth decay) is just beginning. The chewing surface of teeth is not an area where x-rays are diagnostic during early decay breakdown, so occasionally we have to go to alternative technology to get information.
Lasers are finding an increasingly large place in healthcare. In dentistry, the most research has been in the application of lasers to periodontal or gum disease. At CenterCare, diode lasers are used to reduce bacterial and viral activity in the mouth.
Radio waves, at their source, emit a large amount of energy. When this energy is harnessed in a surgical instrument, wave technology can be used to do very fine incisions, biopsies, excisions and cauterization. At CenterCare, we use radiosurgery instruments for all these purposes.