We provide dental care to every member of the family in a setting we hope you find comfortable and relaxing. Most folks don’t equate “relaxed and comfortable” with a dental visit, but we try hard to make it so. Our open operatories avoid that claustrophobic feeling; the bird feeders just outside the windows lure the birds in to give you something to focus on besides the work at hand; our eclectic musical selections are … well, at the very least, they’re distracting; and our new technology allow us to treat you with less discomfort, quicker, and in fewer visits.
A Few Things We Do To Make Appointments Go Smoother and Quicker:
Waterlase Laser: Lasers are an up & coming dental technology! Often the laser allows us to treat patients without an injection. No fear of needles before the appointment and no obnoxious numbness for hours after!
Nitrous Oxide– Laughing Gas: Each room is plumbed to deliver nitrous oxide and oxygen, so your cares can float away as we work.
Topical Anesthetic: The newer formulations of topical anesthetic, along with the laser, can sometimes preclude the use of an injection. Even when you do need an injection, the topical makes the experience easier than in the past.
Anesthetic Warmers: Anesthetic at body temperature makes an injection less painful.
CEREC3 CAD/CAM System: The CEREC3 is a computer assisted design and milling unit that allows us to make porcelain veneers, crowns, onlays, and inlays in less time, with only one appointment, and, we‘ve found, with less post-operative discomfort.
Bite Blocks: To rest your weary jaw as we work. Some patients like them so much, they ask for them when they sit down.
Piezo-Electric Scalers: By using the ProSelect3 Scaler we can greatly reduce the “nails on a chalkboard” sensation that hand scaling during your cleaning can produce.
High Intensity Curing Lights: When we place fillings that require light activation to harden, we use Apollo arc light curing wands. These reduce the curing time by a third or more. When the hygienists place sealants it takes only 2 seconds to harden with these lights. And faster for us means easier for you.
Quieter Drills: When we do have to use the drill, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve replaced the noisy air-turbine drills with much quieter electric ones. They have a smoother cut and less “chatter” which means less vibration when we’re preparing your tooth for a restoration.
Tooth Colored Restorations
For most small to medium restorations, composite is the way to go. It’s so much nicer than the silver/mercury amalgam fillings of old.
Why Composites are nicer than Amalgams
Composite tooth is colored so it looks like the rest of the tooth, unlike the dark, gray amalgams.
Composite bonds to the tooth, where amalgams just sit in a hole. That means we can remove less healthy tooth when we’re taking out the decay for the filling [amalgams need undercuts to stay in which weaken the tooth]. The bond between composite and the tooth also returns some strength back to the tooth [not much, but every bit helps!].
Composite has no metal in it, so size-for-size composites are less temperature sensitive.
Composite is dimensionally stable once it’s placed and changes in temperature expands & contracts composite at the same rate as your tooth. Amalgams expand over time and they expand & contract with temperature changes differently than teeth do. That means that composite is less likely to “grow” the fractures your teeth are subject to when you chew. And that means fewer crowns in your future!
Porcelain veneers are very thin shells of porcelain we bond to your teeth. With them we can change the shape and color of your teeth, fill in gaps, straighten them, lengthen them, and generally improve your smile. Porcelain veneers are strong once they are bonded to your teeth, color stable, and resist staining. When your front teeth are otherwise strong but not so good looking, porcelain veneers are the ticket. And with the CEREC3 we can often do them in one visit.
Crowns
When a tooth is badly broken down due to decay or fracture we place a crown over the tooth to surround it, strengthen it and restore full function back to the tooth. Also, after a tooth has had root canal therapy it will often need a crown to hold things together and avoid a fracture that could otherwise doom the tooth.
We use different materials in different situations, but often we prefer to use the CEREC3 to make a porcelain crown in one visit.
Inlays & Onlays
Inlays are the “top of the line” filling. They are made of porcelain and bonded in place. Studies indicate that they return full strength to a tooth, unlike fillings that will fall short of that ideal. We do inlays on teeth that need a moderate to large filling, but still have all their cusps intact. When stress or esthetics demand the best we can give you, an inlay is the strongest, best looking restoration we can place.
Onlays used to be called Three-Quarter Crowns, but that was too easy for patients to visualize, so the profession began calling them onlays. Aren’t buzzwords great! Onlays are an intermediate step between an inlay and a crown and are often placed when one or two cusps on a tooth are compromised or destroyed, but the others are in good shape. Any more tissue loss and we’d opt for a crown, so onlays are a way to avoid a full crown and conserve the good parts of a damaged tooth.
We do both inlays and onlay using our CEREC3 machine and they are completed in one visit, just like full crowns.
We can replace one or more teeth in many ways. A fixed bridge is one of the strongest and best looking alternatives. The teeth adjacent to the missing teeth are prepared for crowns so they line up properly and a bridge is made to replace the missing teeth [we call the replacement teeth pontics] as well as cover over the anchor teeth [we call those teeth abutments]. Fixed bridges give you back full chewing function in that area, look great, and last for many years.
Removable Bridgework [Partial Dentures]
Another way to replace missing teeth is with a partial denture. They can replace any number of teeth in an arch [your upper or lower jaw is called an arch]. A metal framework is made with plastic teeth hanging off of it and clasps that grab on to the remaining teeth. Partials need to be removed and brushed after each meal and we recommend that patients leave them out at night to “air out” their gums. A partial denture won’t last as long, be as strong or look as good as a fixed bridge, but it’s a cheaper alternative that can provide years of service.
Dentistry has made great advances in the care of gums in the last decade. Over 80% of Americans have some kind of gum problem that requires treatment. More than three fourths of teeth that are lost in America are lost to gum disease and untreated gum disease has been linked to heart disease, lung disease and even osteoporosis.
We use the Biolase Diode Lasers, ProSelect 3 Ultrasonic Scalers, Rotadent Electric Toothbrushes, and anything else we can get our hands on to help improve your gums and save your smile. Most important to our success is educating our patients so they can do the home care needed to ensure we’re all pulling in the same direction. Our Soft-Tissue Management Program aims to head off gum surgery by a specialist and we are seeing success daily by teaming with patients to address this problem that has long been ignored.
Keith’s stint at the Migrant and Rural Health Care Association was a trial by fire when it came to extractions. This experience means he’s quite comfortable removing teeth, including impacted wisdoms. With the addition of the WaterLase laser, we anticipate that our patients having extractions or oral surgery will have fewer post-operative problems.
Other surgery [ biopsy, tongue ties, gum “sculpting” etc.]
We also do simple biopsies of oral lesions, correct “tongue ties”, and contour gum tissue to improve a “gummy” smile line all by using the Waterlase Dental Laser.
Custom Whitening Trays that we make in the office in conjunction with Perfecta brand whitening agent in various strengths.
Once we examine your teeth and determine that at-home bleaching is right for you, we take impressions of your teeth to make custom whitening trays out of a soft, flexible plastic material.
We’ll give you the appropriate strength agent for your teeth and have you apply it inside the trays, wearing them for one to two hours a day. We monitor your progress during the bleaching process, adjusting the strength of the Perfecta agent depending on the results we see and any irritation or tooth sensitivity you may be experiencing, and we usually see initial results within 10 days and patients often get to the shade they desire in 4 to 6 weeks.
We do root canal therapy on most front and bicuspid teeth and on selected molars. Root canals are often completed in only one visit and we make every effort to make this “nuclear weapon” of dentistry as pain-free as possible. With the advances in technique and instruments dentistry has today, it’s rare that root canals deserve the bad reputation they have among the general public. They’re kinda like policemen: people might complain about them, but when you need one, you really want one … now!
is a computer assisted design and milling unit that allows us to make porcelain veneers, crowns, onlays, and inlays in less time, with only one appointment, and, we‘ve found, with less post-operative discomfort. 
Composite bonds to the tooth, where amalgams just sit in a hole. That means we can remove less healthy tooth when we’re taking out the decay for the filling [amalgams need undercuts to stay in which weaken the tooth]. The bond between composite and the tooth also returns some strength back to the tooth [not much, but every bit helps!]. 
Porcelain veneers are very thin shells of porcelain we bond to your teeth. With them we can change the shape and color of your teeth, fill in gaps, straighten them, lengthen them, and generally improve your smile. Porcelain veneers are strong once they are bonded to your teeth, color stable, and resist staining. When your front teeth are otherwise strong but not so good looking, porcelain veneers are the ticket. And with the CEREC3 we can often do them in one visit.
When a tooth is badly broken down due to decay or fracture we place a crown over the tooth to surround it, strengthen it and restore full function back to the tooth. Also, after a tooth has had root canal therapy it will often need a crown to hold things together and avoid a fracture that could otherwise doom the tooth.
We use the 
