The Strides in Cosmetic Dentistry

The world of dentistry has advanced a great deal in even the past few decades to meet the growing demand of its clients who want more from their dentist than preventative care and restoration work to repair tooth decay. Today a dentist is part artist and part doctor with a little bit of a visionary thrown in there as they work to create or re- create as the case maybe, the smile that their patient wants to have and this is where cosmetic dentistry comes in.

A few decades ago a cavity meant taking out a lot of your natural tooth, including a good portion of healthy tooth in order to remove the decay and put in the filling. Back then fillings were usually that grayish silver fill that was obvious every time you opened your mouth. Worse yet these old fillings are full of bits of mercury and can actually poise a health risk to you. Today, your cosmetic dentistry professional has the advanced skills and technology to remove only the portion of decayed tooth necessary without taking out any healthier tooth than necessary. Plus tooth fillings today are far less noticeable because they are made up of composite materials that are the color of your natural tooth so they don’t stand out against your natural tooth like older fillings.

Your cosmetic dentist can also create a tooth where once there wasn’t one, but this trick isn’t as much about magic as it is about a surgical implant. Dental implants have been around now for twenty years but they haven’t become very well known about until recent years. A dental implant consists of two parts. The first part is basically a titanium screw that is surgically implanted into your jaw bone.

Your jaw bone must be dense enough for the screw to have enough bone to anchor itself in to and then over time your body does the rest as your natural bone begins to heal around the screw and further anchors it into place. The top part of this dental implant resembles a natural tooth; your cosmetic dentistry specialist can even match it to your natural surrounding teeth. Once your dental implant is in place, no one can tell your natural teeth from your dental implants. These cosmetic additions have the added bonus of lasting as long as your natural teeth, providing you take care of them and brush, floss and continue with your good oral health habits. The added advantage to a dental implant over bridge work or even dentures is the ease of use. Bridges still have to be taken out at night to be cleaned and they create a strict diet limitation in your life.

Dentures, even more so, but dental implants free you up to eat what you want without the fear of pulling out any dental appliances.

Clearly the world of the cosmetic dentist has advanced and continues to advance in strides, leaps and bounds, so it’s well worth investigating what a cosmetic dentist can do for you that they couldn’t do decades ago.