General and Family Dentistry
Modern Dentistry with a gentle touch
Preventive Dentistry
Preventive dentistry is the practice of caring for your teeth to keep them healthy.
Preventive dentistry is the practice of caring for your teeth to keep to prevent cavities, gum disease, enamel wear and more. There are several forms of preventive dentistry, such as daily brushing and professional dental cleanings. To maintain optimal oral health, the American Dental Association (ADA) recommends visiting your dentist at least once per year. Children should be taught proper oral hygiene at an early age. These practices are designed to ensure that teeth are clean, strong and white.
Preventive Services Offered:
- Dental Exams & Cleaning
- Dental Sealants
- Digital X-Rays
Composite Dental Filling
Preventive dentistry is the practice of caring for your teeth to keep them healthy.
What is a filling?
A dental filling is an effective, simple way to repair a tooth that has suffered from minor to moderate decay or another type of damage. At Groover Family Dentistry, we offer amalgam dental fillings for a lasting restoration. To place a dental filling in Savannah, Georgia, we first remove the decay from the tooth. Our dentist will then thoroughly clean and sanitize the tooth, then fill the tooth with the amalgam material. After the filling is shaped to fit the shape of your tooth, it is allowed to harden for a lasting restoration. On average, an amalgam filling lasts for 10-12 years.
Dental Bridges
Dental bridges literally bridge the gap created by one or more missing teeth.
A bridge is made up of two or more crowns for the teeth on either side of the gap — these two or more anchoring teeth are called abutment teeth — and a false tooth/teeth in between. These false teeth are called pontics and can be made from gold, alloys, porcelain, or a combination of these materials. Dental bridges are supported by natural teeth or implants.
What Are the Benefits of Dental Bridges?
Bridges can:
- Restore your smile
- Restore the ability to properly chew and speak
- Maintain the shape of your face
- Distribute the forces in your bite properly by replacing missing teeth
- Prevent remaining teeth from drifting out of position
Dental Crowns
A crown is a cover or “cap” your dentist can put over a tooth. The crown restores the tooth to its normal shape, size, and function. A crown can make the tooth stronger or improve the way it looks.
Reasons you may need a crown:
• You have a cavity that is too large for a filling
• You have a tooth that is cracked, worn down, or otherwise weakened
• You have had root canal treatment — the crown will protect the restored tooth
• You want to cover a discolored or badly shaped tooth and improve your smile
Full & Partial Dentures
A denture is a removable replacement for missing teeth and surrounding tissues. Two types of dentures are available — complete and partial dentures. Complete dentures are used when all the teeth are missing, while partial dentures are used when some natural teeth remain.
Complete Dentures
Complete dentures can be either “conventional” or “immediate.” Made after the teeth have been removed and the gum tissue has begun to heal, a conventional denture is ready for placement in the mouth about eight to 12 weeks after the teeth have been removed.
Unlike conventional dentures, immediate dentures are made in advance and can be positioned as soon as the teeth are removed. As a result, the wearer does not have to be without teeth during the healing period. However, bones and gums shrink over time, especially during the healing period following tooth removal. Therefore a disadvantage of immediate dentures compared with conventional dentures is that they require more adjustments to fit properly during the healing process and generally should only be considered a temporary solution until conventional dentures can be made.
Partial Dentures
A removable partial denture or bridge usually consists of replacement teeth attached to a pink or gum-colored plastic base, which is sometimes connected by metal framework that holds the denture in place in the mouth. Partial dentures are used when one or more natural teeth remain in the upper or lower jaw. A fixed bridge replaces one or more teeth by placing crowns on the teeth on either side of the space and attaching artificial teeth to them. This “bridge” is then cemented into place. Not only does a partial denture fill in the spaces created by missing teeth, it prevents other teeth from changing position. A precision partial denture is removable and has internal attachments rather than clasps that attach to the adjacent crowns. This is a more natural-looking appliance.
Emergency Dental Care
When you or a family member is experiencing a dental emergency, it can mean the world to know you have a trusted dental team on your side who’s ready to help. At South Arlington Dental Care, we want to be that safe place for patients of all ages. Don’t wait to reach out – contact us right away so we can schedule an emergency appointment for you. If you’re calling off-hours or on a weekend, our 24/7 phone service will get you in touch with someone, and if you’re unable to reach our office right away, we provide guidance for how to manage your emergency situation until Dr. Prachi Shah can give you the relief you need through expert care.
So what constitutes a dental emergency? We trust your judgment in these situations, but if you’re unsure, here are some of the most common cases our Arlington, TX team treats:
- Partially Knocked Out Tooth
- Fully Knocked Out Tooth
- Cracked or Chipped tooth
- Fractured Tooth
- Painful toothache
- Knocked Out Filling or Crown
- Object Stuck Between Teeth
- Soft Tissue Injury
While many dental emergencies happen because of unavoidable circumstances, there are steps patients can take to protect their smiles. When participating in an athletic event, always wear a sportsguard. Don’t use your teeth to open difficult packaging. Rely on scissors instead. Take care to avoid particularly chewy or sticky foods, and resist the temptation to chew the ice from your drink, as this may cause damage.
Of course, there are some extremely dire situations where assistance from an emergency room is recommended. This includes heavy oral bleeding, facial swelling, and a severely damaged jaw that could be broken. Dr. Shah assists patients with treatment of any broken teeth after their initial recovery.
Time is of the essence in emergency situations, so don’t wait – contact our Arlington area practice today for help! We also welcome patients from Grand Prairie, Fort Worth, and beyond.
Gum Treatments
How is gum disease treated?
A range of treatments are used to stop or reverse gum disease. In the early stages of the disease, most treatment involves non-surgical procedures; however, in more advanced stages, surgical procedures are often required.
Non-surgical procedures
Scaling and root planing: While a regular dental cleaning is for the visible portion of teeth, scaling and root planing is a special cleaning that removes plaque and tartar (also known as calculus) from under the gumline (in periodontal pockets) and smoothes the root surfaces to promote healing. A scaling procedure is the only way to remove calculus from this area.
In some cases, antibiotics or antimicrobials may be used to supplement the effects of scaling and root planing. In most cases of early gum disease, scaling and root planing in addition to continued daily cleaning at home will achieve a satisfactory result of reversing gum disease.
- Periodontal maintenance/supportive periodontal therapy: Following a scaling and root planing, specialized deep cleanings can minimize the recurrence or progression of gum disease.
Surgical procedures
- Pocket depth reduction procedures: Your dentist will open up the affected gum tissue so that disease-causing bacteria and calculus build-up can be removed. Some cases may require smoothing and recontouring the damaged bone and root surfaces to allow the gum tissue to reattach to healthy bone during healing. The procedure also repositions the gum tissue so that it is easier to keep clean.
- Regeneration: Your dentist will treat the affected gum tissue in the same way as in pocket depth reduction procedures, with the additional procedure of using membranes, bone grafts or tissue-stimulating proteins to stimulate the body’s natural ability to regenerate healthy bone and gum tissue.
- Soft tissue grafts: Your dentist will take healthy gum tissue from the roof of the mouth (palate) or other areas of the mouth and use it to repair receding gums and cover exposed root surfaces.
Pediatric Dentistry
Children’s Oral Health
Pediatric dentists are the pediatricians of dentistry. A pediatric dentist has two to three years specialty training following dental school and limits his/her practice to treating children only. Pediatric dentists are primary and specialty oral care providers for infants and children through adolescence, including those with special health needs.
Since every child is different, pediatric dentists have a wide range of approaches to help a child complete needed dental treatment. A pediatric dentist makes a recommendation of behavior guidance methods for the child based upon health history, special health care needs, dental needs, type of treatment required, the consequences of no treatment, emotional and intellectual development, and parental preferences.
For more information about pediatric dentistry or pediatric dentists, visit My Children’s Teeth.
Root Canal Therapy
Preventive dentistry is the practice of caring for your teeth to keep them healthy.
Root canal therapy is a treatment used to repair and save a tooth that is badly decayed or infected.
Root canal therapy is performed when the pulp which is composed of nerves and blood vessels in the tooth becomes infected or damaged. During root canal therapy, the pulp is removed, and the inside of the tooth is cleaned and sealed.
People fear root canals because they assume they are painful. Actually, most people report that the procedure itself is no more painful than having a filling placed. The discomfort experienced in the period leading up to seeking dental care is truly painful, not the procedure itself.
What Is Dental Pulp?
The pulp or pulp chamber is the soft area within the center of the tooth and contains the nerve, blood vessels, and connective tissue. The tooth’s nerve is in the “root” or “legs” of the tooth. The root canals travel from the tip of the tooth’s root into the pulp chamber.
A tooth’s nerve is not vitally important to a tooth’s health and function after the tooth has emerged through the gums. Its only function is sensory — to provide the sensation of heat or cold. The presence or absence of a nerve will not affect the day-to-day functioning of the tooth. However, after treatment the tooth is less viable and more susceptible to fracture.
Why Does the Pulp Need to Be Removed?
When pulp is damaged, it breaks down, and bacteria begin to multiply within the pulp chamber. The bacteria and other dying pulp remnants can cause an infection or abscessed tooth. An abscess is a pus-filled pocket that forms at the end of a tooth’s root. In addition to an abscess, an infection in the root canal of a tooth can cause:
What Damages a Tooth’s Pulp in the First Place?
A tooth’s pulp can become irritated, inflamed, and infected due to deep decay, repeated dental procedures on a tooth, large fillings, a crack or chip in the tooth, or trauma to the face.
What Are the Signs That Root Canal Therapy Is Needed?
Signs you may need root canal therapy include:
- Severe toothache pain upon chewing or application of pressure
- Prolonged sensitivity (pain) to hot or cold temperatures (after the heat or cold has been removed)
- Discoloration (darkening) of the tooth
- Swelling and tenderness in nearby gums
- A persistent or recurring pimple on the gums
Sometimes no symptoms are present.
The Root Canal Procedure
Root canal therapy requires one or more office visits and can be performed by a dentist or endodontist. An endodontist is a dentist who specializes in the causes, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases and injuries of the teeth’s dental pulp. The choice of which type of dentist to use depends to some degree on the difficulty of the root canal procedure needed in your particular tooth and the general dentist’s comfort level in working on your tooth. Your dentist will discuss who might be best suited to perform the work in your particular case.
The first step in the procedure is to take an X-ray to see the shape of the root canals and determine if there are any signs of infection in the surrounding bone. Your dentist or endodontist will then use local anesthesia to numb the area near the tooth. Actually, anesthesia may not be necessary, since the nerve is dead, but most dentists still anesthetize the area to make the patient more relaxed and at ease.
Next, to keep the area dry and free of saliva during treatment, your dentist will place a rubber dam (a sheet of rubber) around the tooth.
An access hole will then be drilled into the tooth. The pulp, along with bacteria and related debris, is removed from the tooth. The cleaning-out process is accomplished using root canal files. A series of these files of increasing diameter are each subsequently placed into the access hole and worked down the full length of the tooth to scrape and scrub the sides of the root canals. Water or sodium hypochlorite is used periodically to flush away the debris.
Once the tooth is thoroughly cleaned, it needs to be sealed. Some dentists like to wait a week before sealing the tooth. For instance, if there is an infection, your dentist may put a medication inside the tooth to clear it up. Others may choose to seal the tooth the same day it is cleaned out. If root canal therapy is not completed on the same day, a temporary filling is placed in the exterior hole in the tooth to keep contaminants out between appointments.
At the next appointment, to fill the interior of the tooth, a sealer paste and a rubber compound called gutta-percha are placed into the tooth’s root canal. To fill the exterior access hole created at the beginning of treatment, a filling is placed.
The final step may involve further restoration of the tooth. Because a tooth that needs root canal therapy often is one that has a large filling or extensive decay or other weakness, a crown, crown and post, or other restoration often needs to be placed on the tooth to protect it, prevent it from breaking, and restore it to full function. Your dentist will discuss the need for any additional dental work with you.
What Should One Expect After Root Canal Therapy?
Root canal therapy should relieve the pain you feel. Until your root canal procedure is completely finished — that is, the permanent filling is in place and a crown, if needed, is in place — it’s wise to minimize chewing on the tooth under repair. This step will help avoid recontaminating the tooth’s interior and also may prevent a fragile tooth from breaking before the tooth can be fully restored.
For the first few days following the completion of treatment, the tooth may feel sensitive due to natural tissue inflammation, especially if there was pain or infection before the procedure. This sensitivity or discomfort usually can be controlled with over-the-counter pain medications such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) or naproxen (Aleve). Most patients can return to their normal activities the next day.
As far as oral health care is concerned, brush and floss as you regularly would, and see your dentist at normally scheduled intervals. Because the final step of root canal therapy is application of a restoration such as a crown or a filling, it will not be obvious to onlookers that a root canal was performed.
Root canal treatment is highly successful; the procedure has more than a 95% success rate. Many teeth fixed with root canal therapy can last a lifetime.
Complications of Root Canal Therapy
Despite your dentist’s best efforts to clean and seal a tooth, new infections might emerge. Among the likely reasons for this include:
- More than the normally anticipated number of root canals in a tooth (leaving one of them uncleaned)
- An undetected crack in the root of a tooth
- A defective or inadequate dental restoration that has allowed bacteria to get past the restoration into the inner aspects of the tooth and recontaminate the area
- A breakdown of the inner sealing material over time, allowing bacteria to recontaminate the inner aspects of the tooth
Sometimes re-treatment can be successful. Other times, endodontic surgery must be tried in order to save the tooth. The most common endodontic surgical procedure is an apicoectomy, or root-end resection. This procedure relieves the inflammation or infection in the bony area around the end of your tooth. In this procedure, the gum tissue is opened, the infected tissue is removed, and sometimes the very end of the root is removed. A small filling may be placed to seal the root canal.
Cost of Root Canal Therapy
The cost varies depending on how severe the problem is and which tooth is affected. Many dental insurance policies cover endodontic treatment. A ballpark estimate for the root canal treatment itself (not including a dental restoration following the procedure) performed by a general dentist could range from $350 to $540 for an incisor and $520 to $800 for a molar. The fees charged by endodontists could be up to 50% higher.
Alternatives to Root Canal Therapy
Saving your natural teeth is the very best option, if possible. Your natural teeth make it possible for you to eat a wide variety of foods necessary to maintain proper nutrition. Root canal therapy is the treatment of choice.
The only alternative to a root canal procedure is having the tooth extracted. The tooth would then be replaced with a bridge, implant, or removable partial denture to restore chewing function and prevent adjacent teeth from shifting. These alternatives not only are more expensive than a root canal procedure but require more treatment time and additional procedures to adjacent teeth and supporting tissues.
Since some of the reasons that a tooth’s pulp becomes inflamed and infected are deep decay, repeated dental procedures on a tooth, and large fillings, following good oral hygiene practices (brushing twice a day, flossing and using an antiseptic mouthwash at least once a day, and scheduling regular dental visits) may reduce the need for a root canal procedure. Trauma resulting from a sports-related injury can be reduced by wearing a mouth guard.
Sedation Dentistry
Preventive dentistry is the practice of caring for your teeth to keep them healthy.
We offer 4 options for sedation dentistry; Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas), Oral Sedation, IV Sedation and General Anesthesia. After meeting with you, our dentist will recommend the appropriate method based on your needs.
Nitrous Oxide is best for those patients who have lower anxiety, shorter procedure and cannot block out their whole day for dental treatment. Nitrous Oxide is available for all our patients who need it and at Advanced Smile Care and we never charge for this service.
Oral conscious sedation is easy and requires no needles. Because of that, this is now the most common technique used in the United States and Canada to quell patient fears. Best of all, the medications create such a comfortable experience that most patients do not remember the visit; and some even sleep through the treatment! While sedation dentistry has occasionally been called “sleep dentistry”, it is not something that is promised. While some fall asleep, many don’t.
IV conscious sedation is a deeper form of sedation that is administered intravenously. This method of sedation is for patients that need to be more deeply sedated than oral conscious sedation.
General Anesthesia sedation in our office is administered and monitored by an Anesthesiologist. This method is for patients that need to be completely unconscious for their dental treatment. We have also worked with special needs patients that require general anesthesia.
© BLDentalandOrthodontics
ADDRESS
2200 Los Rios Blvd, Suite #100,
Plano, TX
ABOUT US
Meet Our Team
Meet Dr. Mohammad Chowdhury
Meet Dr. Shahin Sultana
Our Services