Is having the latest and greatest technology really that important? At Heck Family Dentistry of Lawrence, we evaluate the importance of various technologies on a case-by-case basis. Since we are committed to providing you with the best possible dental care, we ask the question, “Does it allow us to provide better care for our patients?” If the answer is a resounding “Yes,” we invest in it.
Our Sopro intraoral camera is one of our most valuable educational instruments. It gives us a way to show you what is going on inside your mouth so that you can fully understand why specific procedures need to be done in a particular way. The images produced by the camera are extremely sharp, and we can switch between various modes depending on what needs to be examined. This includes a Macro mode that magnifies the image up to 115 times, showing us details that would otherwise go unnoticed by the naked eye.
A routine dental exam can tell us plenty about the state of your oral health. However, sometimes cavities and issues could be hiding in areas that can only be revealed with an X-ray. We generally recommend having an X-ray done at least once a year so that we have a greater chance of detecting problems early enough to treat them easily. Additional X-rays might be taken depending on your age, health history, and your overall risk for oral disease. To ensure the best results, we use the Schick elite sensor to quickly produce high-quality images while exposing you to far less radiation than would be involved with traditional radiography. This also minimizes the amount of time you spend in the dental chair.
Healing after any surgery is extremely important. Delayed healing means pain and sometimes a greater risk of infection or complications. This is one reason we utilize an advanced technique called L-PRF.
Essentially, we draw your blood and place it into a centrifuge. It’s then prepared and placed into the surgical site as a sort of super Band-Aid that promotes bone and tissue growth at a rapid rate.
Research shows that this type of treatment helps speed up recovery, diminish pain, and increase surgical success. This is a nearly painless treatment that allows us to use your own body’s resources to heal and grow new bone, which can be vital to implant surgeries or simple tooth extractions. With this technology, there is a significant decrease in dry-socket complications as well.
Procedures such as dental implant placement require us to have a complete understanding of your mouth and your various dental structures. A regular X-ray can’t give us all of the information we need. Instead, we’ll take a cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) image using the Sirona Galileos Comfort scanner in order to create a three-dimensional model of your mouth that will show us nerve pathways, dental structures, and other variables that we need to take into account.
For treatments involving the gums, we can forego the need for traditional metal tools and instead employ a soft tissue diode laser. This instrument is particularly useful for treating gum disease or removing excess tissue to expose more of the underlying tooth. Lasers make it much easier to be precise with the amount of tissue removed, and they cauterize blood vessels and nerves as we go along to stop much of the bleeding and discomfort that typically occurs with these treatments.
A minor cavity can quickly turn into a severe problem if it goes undetected for too long. We want to make absolutely sure that we’re not overlooking any potential issues in your smile. Thanks to the DIAGNOdent pen, we can use fluorescence to identify areas of decay. (We’ll know when we’ve found a cavity when we find a spot with high fluorescence.) DIAGNOdent readings are highly reliable and let us know when professional intervention is required.