Restoring Function to a Damaged Smile Near Leona Valley
Dental Crowns & Dental Bridges
Crowns are synthetic caps, usually made of materials such as porcelain or gold, placed over damaged teeth. A crown restores a tooth’s function and appearance following another restorative procedure such as a root canal. Dental bridges are designed to replace a missing tooth by bridging the gap between two healthy teeth using a false tooth (pontic) fused to two crowns that fit over adjacent healthy teeth.
Zirconium Dental Crowns
At Les Kurian Family Dentistry, we prefer using state-of-the-art zirconium crowns. Zirconium has many advantages over porcelain or gold crowns, including:
- It’s nearly indestructible
- It can withstand great wear and tear
- It’s translucent just like natural teeth
- It requires less removal of tooth structure
- It’s size, shape and color can be changed
- It is biocompatible with your body
- It is not fused over metal
For most people, the esthetic effect alone is the biggest advantage. Your dental crowns should look natural especially if they are placed on front teeth and will be visible beside your natural teeth. Our ability to modify zirconium to precisely match your other teeth is very important.
Moreover, zirconium is biocompatible with the human body, which makes it safe to keep in your mouth for a long time. You need not worry about adverse reactions.
Root Canal Therapy
When the pulp of a tooth becomes infected with bacteria or dies, root canal therapy is necessary to save the tooth. The tooth pulp is a soft tissue made up of nerves and blood vessels. It is contained in the pulp chamber that extends from the middle of the tooth down through the tooth roots.
Infection occurs most commonly through a deep cavity that allows bacteria through the enamel and dentin layers and into the pulp. Sometimes the pulp simply dies due to a fracture or a blow to the tooth. Root canal therapy is generally a comfortable treatment that can save your tooth and keep your mouth healthy. You may realize that you have an infected tooth when:
- Your tooth is sensitive to hot or cold
- Your tooth hurts with biting or pressure
- You have throbbing, severe tooth pain
- Infection has spread into the pulp
- Your gums are swollen around the infected tooth
- You have a bad taste in your mouth
You may be unaware of a problem because there are no symptoms at all. It is important to treat an infected tooth in order to prevent the infection from traveling through the root tips and causing a painful abscess in the jawbone.
PINHOLE SURGICAL TECHNIQUE
Pinhole® Surgical Technique: Easier on You & Your Gums
The innovative Pinhole Surgical Technique is a new way to repair shrinking gums without having to cut the gums open. Many patients avoid surgical gum grafting because they don’t like scalpels and don’t want any pain or discomfort. Yet, they still need some form of gum rejuvenation to protect their teeth.
The standard gum grafting procedure takes about 60 to 90 minutes per tooth and requires cutting a graft from the palate (the roof of the mouth) with a scalpel and grafting it where it's needed. This procedure creates two surgical wounds and requires two or three weeks of recovery time.
What's different about Pinhole Surgical Technique?
It eliminates the need to perform a graft. There's no scalpel or cutting at all. We make a tiny pinhole and literally shift the tissue down with very little trauma. There are no open wounds and virtually no pain. Nothing in dentistry is less invasive than this. The tiny pinhole that we make seals itself and shrinks away by the next day.
The Pinhole Surgical Technique is not meant to cure gum disease. The Pinhole Surgical Technique is meant to restore your gum line to normal and protect your tooth roots. In fact, if you have gum disease, we cannot use this technique until your infection is resolved.
Learn more at www.pinholesurgicaltechnique.com/find-a-dentist.php
Discover the latest gum surgical technique at Les Kurian Family Dentistry. Call 661-948-2828 or use our convenient Request an Appointment form. Our restorative dentistry patients come to us from Lancaster, Palmdale, Leona Valley, Rosamond, Quartz Hill and surrounding locations.
