Dental Procedures

Series Summary

Many people today want a whiter, brighter smile. Some can achieve it with proper oral hygiene—regular brushing, flossing, and using mouthwash. Some people need a little extra help to get their yellowing teeth to return to the land of sparkling white, especially smokers and coffee drinkers. There are a number of products that will help turn teeth a few shades whiter, including bleaching agents and toothpastes that contain whiteners. For some, these do the trick; for others, over the counter solutions are often hit and miss, with temporary results. There are a number of factors that go into dental care, from choosing the right dentist to taking care of the teeth and gums at home. In this free video series, a dentist will provide information about dental procedures, equipment and pedodontic dentistry. Additional advice on becoming a dentist, curing toothaches and using mouthwash will be provided as well. Keep the teeth and mouth clean with these dental care tips!

Video Transcript

"Dr. Joe Neely and I practice with the Barton Oaks Dental Group. I'm going to discuss dental procedures which is a very broad category. A dental procedure can be anything as simple as a cleaning, which is removing the hard deposits that you can't get off yourself off your teeth. Or removing soft deposits that are in areas that are so far up into the gum you physically can't get to them. To scaling root planing, which is somewhat similar in nature to cleaning. Except it requires anesthesia, because you have to go through the attachment of the gum to the tooth in order to get below the level of the hard tartar to remove it. You have a dental procedure of a sealant, which is simply cleaning out the grooves of the tooth. The undecayed grooves of the tooth. Assuring yourself that there is no decay and then etching the tooth creating some kind of acid edge to the tooth, then applying a plastic coating that fits in the grooves of the teeth to protect it against decay. You have a filling, which is simply going in and physically removing any infected part of the tooth enamel. The bacteria live off of plaque which is a combination of bacteria and food source and the gelatinous mass that sticks to the tooth. Once the by product is acid, once the acid eats through the hard outer shell of the tooth, it can the bacteria can now live off of the internal portion of the tooth. And in order to keep it from destroying the tooth, you have to go in and physically cut that part out. And then that part of the tooth that's been removed, is restored with a filling. And there are numerous types of filling materials. When the defect becomes large enough that structurally you can't, the tooth can't support a filling any longer. Then the opposite is done. More of the perimeter of the tooth is removed and then a crown is done over the tooth. A crown brings structural support from the outside to the tooth, whereas a filling requires a tooth to provide the structural support for the filling. Now crowns can be a combination of metal and porcelain to gain the combination of strength from the metal and the aesthetics of porcelain. It can be all porcelain for greater aesthetics or it can be all metal in areas where nothing else is saved. You also have the ability procedure would be a veneer, which is nothing more than just part, a thing part of a crown. It's exactly like a porcelain crown, in fact in today's world, where veneer stops and a crown starts is a very, very gray area. Because it's all a matter of percentages. Other procedures would be root canals which is the removal of the contents of a tooth. Extraction which would be the removal of a tooth. Biopsy which would be the removal of tissue to be studied under a microscope. And the list goes on and on."