Dental Info

Lately I've seen an uptick in new patients entering our practice.   It seems that an increasing  number of my contemporary dentists (baby boomers) have chosen to retire and some of their patients were not particularly happy with their younger replacements.  Boomer  dentists are defined as those born between 1946 and 1964 and many are retirement age.  When I queried these new patients as to why they left their previous dentist,  many were unhappy with the dentists who took over a prior dentist who retired and they implied that either they didn't feel like they were getting the same "personal attention" and/ or the new dentist was finding problems that their previous dentist didn't mention. Over the years I have had the good fortune to take over a number of dental practices when collegues have chosen to retire. I can attest that this is both an opportunity and a challenge. While I feel flattered that these dentists have chosen me to be their successors, It can be

  Often patients come in with the hope that the solution to their dental problem will be a simple fix, especially if their tooth problem is not associated with any painful symptoms. Sometimes they are right but sometimes they are not. Unfortunately, pain is not always a good indicator of a dental problems severity. some extremely decayed teeth do not cause a lot of discomfort, but tooth structure can be so compromised by the amount of missing tooth structure, that refilling the tooth may not be an option.  Often salvaging a tooth with advanced decay is not always feasible and when it is possible, multiple costly procedures may be required to save the tooth (root canal, crown lengthening, post and core). Sometimes the most predictable solution is to remove an extremely decayed tooth and to arrange for its replacement with an implant and implant restoration.  This involves multiple steps and can be costly, but often the implant option offers a more predictable long term solution. Ob