A good time to bring your child to see a dentist is the moment you see your child’s first baby tooth, anywhere between 4 – 6 months of age. Bringing your child in at an early age not only benefits their overall dental well-being, but also helps to foster their awareness and receptiveness to dental treatment in the future.
Depending on your overall dental health, it is strongly advisable to have your dental check up and cleaning every 6 months. This is because dental diseases, if left unchecked for a prolonged period, can lead to complex and costly future treatments.
Twice per day is the general advice. If you are diligent and can consistently and adequately brush for at least 2 minutes, then once a day before bedtime is sufficient. You should apply gentle force in a circular manner during brushing.
Start by brushing all the front and back surfaces of each tooth before moving onto the gum-line area. The gum line is the biological junction where the gum and the teeth meet. These junctions tend to trap plaque quite easily and are often missed during brushing.
Absolutely! Flossing is crucial in removing plaques that are trapped in the areas between your teeth (interdental area) A toothbrush will not be able to clean such an area effectively. From our clinical experiences, patients who do not floss are likely to develop continual dental decay between their teeth in the long-term.
These inter-dental decays are often hidden from plain sight and can only be detected through the use of dental x-rays. Ideally, you should floss once per day before you go to bed. If that is not easy to do for some reasons, you should try to at least floss one to two times per week, and slowly work your way up to once per day after you’ve become an expert flosser.
There are many factors that influence the lifespan of a filling, such as the size and location of the cavity on a tooth, dietary preference, tooth grinding, and how well you brush and maintain your teeth.
There are a number of different filling materials available and the setting time for a filling will depend on its material composition and brand.
Strictly speaking, drinking can start immediately after fillings are done. However, it is advisable not to eat for one hour, and avoid biting on the filling side as much as possible for the first day. This is because the fillings can take some time to fully harden.
If local anaesthetics were used, it is recommended to wait until the numbness fully subsides, which may take up to 3 to 4 hours before eating. Eating while the lips or tongues are numbed can lead to accidental chewing and trauma to the numbed tissues without knowing it.
Dental decay is a lifestyle disease which can only be managed and therefore cannot be cured. It is a disease caused by a number of factors such as poor oral hygiene habits, sugary diets, and certain medical conditions that affect salivary gland function. The primary goal of dental fillings is to repair tooth structure loss caused by dental decay or trauma and restore the tooth to form and function.
Root canal treatment is generally painless once the tooth is fully numbed under sufficient local anaesthesia. However, there are circumstances where a diseased tooth can develop an acute flare up and adequate local anaesthesia may not be attainable. Such a dental flare up is known as a “hot pulp”. In these scenarios, our experienced dentists may prescribe suitable antibiotics and pain-killers to settle the hot pulp and will postpone the treatment to another day.
Research has shown that root canal therapy carries a success rate of over 90 percent. There are a number of factors that affect this success rate, such as the patient’s underlying medical conditions, the structural integrity of the tooth, and the patient’s overall motivation to good oral hygiene and maintenance.
From our personal experiences, root canal treatment is the treatment of choice to preserve the tooth, and can potentially save the patient a lot of future costs for treatment of missing tooth in the longer term.
The total number of appointments required for root canal treatment depends on the anatomical complexity of the root canal system within a tooth. Generally anterior teeth have a simple root canal system and can be done in one seating. Posterior molars, on the other hand, have more complicated root canals and can take up to two or three appointments to complete.
There are a number of situations where a dental crown is more beneficial than a simple restorative filling.
Dental crowns are often more appropriate when dental cavities are too large to support a filling, or if the tooth has received multiple fillings but it keeps breaking down.
Dental crowns are also recommended if the tooth has had root canal treatment in the past. For all of these situations, a crown is required to provide full coverage protection, as well as providing the tooth with the strength to withstand everyday chewing.
There are a number of treatment options that you can choose to restore the missing tooth. With our current dental technologies, you may choose between a denture, a bridge, an implant, or even braces to remedy the gap caused by missing tooth. If you think none of those options above are suitable, you may choose to leave the gap as it is.
There are pros and cons associated with each treatment option, including leaving the gap unrestored, and our experienced dentists will guide you through the selection process and ensure that you receive the best possible treatment for your circumstances.
There are several factors that determine how frequently a denture needs to be replaced:
From a functionality point of view, dental implants provide superior chewing power over traditional dentures. However, not all patients are suitable to receive dental implants especially if they have certain underlying medical conditions or social economic factors that hinder the provision of dental implants. In these cases, dentures are just as sufficient and may be the treatment of choice.
Dental implants are made to last like our natural teeth. Like our natural teeth, dental implants are also subjected to the same dental disease processes if they are not well maintained. There are myriad of factors that can affect the success of dental implant. Poor oral hygiene, teeth grinding or clenching, uncontrolled diabetes or other uncontrolled medical conditions can all contribute to the failure of dental implants. Hence, a thorough clinical assessment will be needed to determine if you are the right candidate to receiving dental implants.
Braces are suitable for all ages insofar as we are just treating misalignment and crowding of teeth. When it comes to correcting jaw size discrepancy, it is generally best to intervene with dental braces while the child is still growing. For non-growing adults, jaw size discrepancy is best managed with a combination of dental braces and jaw surgeries.
After the teeth are straightened and alignment fully correct, it is time to remove your braces and you will need to wear retainers. This is because your teeth in the new positions still possess the biological memory or tendency to relapse, or move back to their original misaligned position. The retainers are needed to anchor the teeth firmly in place and prevent relapse. After some time it won’t be necessary to wear them as often. However, you should not stop wearing retainers altogether, because your teeth still remember and want to move back to its original position. So the answer is if you want your teeth to remain straightened for life, you will need to wear retainers for life.
For young children and adolescent, braces cause little to no discomfort. This is because the supporting tissues around their teeth are more flexible to tooth movement. In older adults, there may be a feeling of sustained tightness on the teeth and the gum, however, such tightness will progressively taper off in about one to two weeks. It may be uncomfortable to eat with tight teeth, and so you may need to go on a soft diet such as porridge for a short period.
