Dental Info

The question I mean to ask : Is it OK to "ghost" my dentist ? The short answer is No, but here comes my longer answer... For those not familiar with the term, it refers to a way to break up with someone, by ignoring their texts, emails and phone calls. Often there is no warning before this step is taken. I guess the person doing the ghosting is avoiding the messy step of communicating why they want to actually break up since as the as Neil Sedaka's hit song informed us, "Breaking up is hard to do." I believe that when switching dentists , one should cut all communications with the one being left, even when someone is dissatisfied or angry at them. Let's go over the most common reasons for switching dentists they are inconvenient to get to ( the patient moved) change of insurance and they are out of network  They are too expensive , not good enough, or the patient is just not that into them. If any of these is pertinent, then why not communicat...

This idea has been cropping up in some of the lectures I have attended.  I am not sure this is true but the idea behind this theory is that people with sleep apnea may unconsciously be positioning their mandible in a more anterior position in order to improve the opening of their airway.  Consequently their anterior teeth may become more worn. I am not sure of the validity of this theory and I am not aware of a peer review article that demonstrates this to be true. I have even watched a video by a dentist treating sleep apnea that claimed that dentists making night guards in Centric Relation are making their patients sleep apnea worse. Now, I make a lot of hard night guards for my patients and they are all set up with a centric relation occlusal scheme (slightly posterior  bite) and I do not have a lot of my patients complaining of being woken up by poor breathing or excessive snoring. I do tend to use a flat plane hard night guard design that allows easy anterior mov...

In the last several months I have had to fabricate "flipper" removable transitional dentures for several patients who needed extractions. I just could not think of a better temporary option for them. A couple got really upset at the time of insertion ( one was in tears!). Now that a couple of months has gone by, all have accommodated to wearing their plastic removable teeth and one even wants me to make a better more permanent version.  The take home message for me is that people really have an amazing ability to adapt to things and with some time they get used to the idea and they go on with their lives. I always add that this solution can usually be a temporary one, that looks good and is inexpensive. Most are aware that other more expensive options are available if they can't stand wearing their removable "appliance". I call it an appliance because one of my patients requested that she was ok with it as long as I didn't refer to it a denture! from Ask D...

Probably better than 90% of my implant restorations that I place are of the cemented type. I utilize custom cad cam titanium abutments and keep my chamfer finishing lines close to the gingival margins ( I try to be within one mm or less). This makes having cement trapped around my restoration less likely. The primary reason I use these rather than screw retained is that often implants are placed where the bone is and the resulting implant ends up better restored using a custom "angled" abutment. This custom abutment needs to be"angled" because the alignment of the implant is slightly different than than the alignment of the restoration that is needed ( the angulation of the internal implant screw is different than the angulation of the needed restoration) . A screw retained one piece restoration used in this situation may be difficult to insert or result in poor proximal contacts. This is especially true when the alignment of the proximal contacts is differs from ...