If your smile requires more than just a routine check-up, visit the team at Pacific Dental Aesthetics. We offer an array of restorative dentistry treatments to improve your oral health.
We pride ourselves on giving our Hawthorne, CA, dental patients access to high-quality oral health care, which is why we’re trained in a number of services that can restore your smile to its former glory.
What Is Restorative Dentistry?
There are times when your teeth need more than a simple cleaning. You may have tooth decay that requires a filling, an infection that needs to be treated with a root canal, or even a smile that needs full-mouth rehabilitation. At Pacific Dental Aesthetics, we offer all of these services and more as part of our restorative dentistry treatments.
The Importance Of Restorative Dentistry
Restorative dentistry plays an important part in a person’s overall oral health. The treatments help remove infections and decay and help prevent future problems by sealing up the enamel or even covering a tooth entirely to give it strength and protection. To ensure that your smile not only looks healthy but IS healthy, we may recommend certain restorative dental procedures as part of your overall treatment plan.
Our Restorative Solutions
Our list of restorative dental treatments can address a multitude of issues that may arise. Dental fillings treat cavities, and we can use same-day dental crowns to address chipped or cracked teeth. Bridges and dentures replace missing teeth, while root canal therapy seeks to save a tooth from infection. If you have concerns about your smile, talk to us during your next appointment or call to schedule a restorative consultation.
All-Tissue Laser Therapy
We use soft-tissue laser therapy to treat periodontal disease. Using a laser, we can remove infected gum tissue, allowing your gums to heal properly and for gum pockets around teeth to close up. Our hard-tissue lasers will enable us to quickly and easily remove tooth decay and prepare a tooth for a dental filling.
Laser therapy eliminates the need for drilling and provides an overall more comfortable treatment experience.
Dental Fillings
Tooth decay, or cavities, start small but quickly become big problems, causing discomfort and sensitivity. Left untreated, tooth decay can even lead to tooth loss. At our office, we can quickly stop tooth decay in its tracks using natural-looking dental fillings. With this treatment, we remove the decay and then fill in the space left behind with a tooth-colored dental material. Once hardened, the filling protects the tooth from further decay.
Root Canal Therapy
If you have a tooth infection in the roots of a tooth, you may experience severe discomfort, tooth sensitivity to hot and cold, and difficulty chewing using that tooth. Your best treatment option may be a root canal.
The Root Canal Procedure
We understand that the idea of a root canal can cause some patients to feel anxious, but we do all we can to keep you comfortable throughout your procedure. To begin, we apply a local anesthetic to numb the immediate area. Once the area is numb, we isolate the tooth using a small protective dental dam.
With the dental dam in place, the dentist makes a small hole in the crown of the tooth, giving access to the infected tooth roots. We clean out the tooth roots, removing the infected pulp and making room for a filling. To ensure healing from the infection, we may apply an antibiotic to the area. Once the tooth is cleaned out, the dentist fills the canals to seal them against future infections. We place a temporary crown over the tooth while it heals, and then you’ll come back to get a custom-fit, permanent crown.
Healing After A Root Canal
After your procedure, your mouth will need a week or two to fully heal. During this time, make sure to use over-the-counter pain medications to address any discomfort. Cold compresses can also help with any swelling. Stick to eating softer foods for a couple of days, and avoid extremely hard foods like nuts until your permanent crown is in place. In addition, always maintain a good at-home oral hygiene routine to promote healing and keep bacteria at bay.
Same-Day Dental Crowns
Cracks and chips are more than unsightly. They can cause sensitivity and discomfort, make way for infections, and lead to tooth loss. Cover chips and cracks using a tooth-colored dental crown, which is essentially a cap for your tooth. Crowns are also used in other restorative treatments, including fillings and root canal therapy.
Our same-day crowns look and feel natural, and you only need to visit us once to get your crown placed. They are created in one day using advanced technology, including CEREC CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing) and 3D imaging. With same-day crowns, you can get back to enjoying the comforts of day-to-day life right away!
Extractions
As much as we want you to keep your natural smile, sometimes a tooth needs to be extracted, whether due to damage or infection. If your dental team recommends a tooth extraction, rest assured that we will take good care of you and keep you comfortable throughout the procedure. We will also walk you through your restoration options to replace the missing tooth.
Many times, we can perform a simple extraction using a local numbing agent. As long as we can see the tooth above the gums, we can gently loosen it using a special tool and then pull the tooth out.
If the tooth isn’t visible or is too broken, we may need to perform a surgical extraction. With this procedure, we make small incisions in the gums to expose the tooth structure and remove the tooth in pieces if necessary. We then use sutures to close up the gum tissue.
Dental Bridges
A dental bridge is a way to replace missing teeth by “bridging the gap” left behind using false teeth attached to a small appliance. We typically recommend a bridge if you’re missing one or more teeth in a row. The dental bridge appliance attaches to crowns on either side of the gap, and the false teeth sit in place of the missing teeth, giving you a complete smile that looks great and restores function.
Dentures
Patients missing multiple teeth throughout their upper or lower arch may benefit from dentures. A denture is a custom-fit, removable appliance with false teeth that sits over the gums. For the upper arch, the teeth are attached to a plate that fits against the roof of your mouth. A lower arch denture is U-shaped, allowing room for your tongue.
We strive to ensure that your dentures look and feel great. Know that while it will take a few appointments for your dentures to be totally ready to wear, once you have them, you’ll have a lovely smile that will allow you to talk, smile, and eat easily again.
Full-Mouth Rehabilitation
In order to fully restore your smile, you may need a number of different treatments. This is called full-mouth rehabilitation. During your initial appointment, our team will go over your needs and develop a treatment plan tailored to your specific needs. We will also work with your schedule to get you the care you need without too many life interruptions because we know your time is valuable. Want to learn more? Call us to schedule an appointment.
You Deserve To Smile
At Pacific Dental Aesthetics, we believe that everyone is entitled to a beautiful, healthy smile. Our team is trained to give you high-quality care in a welcoming environment. No matter your needs, we will work with you to help you achieve your best smile.
