General Dentistry

Our Aim

By building a relationship with our clients, we aim to promote preventative dentistry in which we help inform and guide our clients to achieve dental health and create a smile that they can be proud of.

Some people prefer the quick in and out, drill and fill style of dentistry.

We feel, and research has shown that this results in more treatment and a failure to prevent further dental problems. This is why when treatment is required we prefer to provide long lasting solutions.

Time to relax

We spend a lot of our time in our practice, and we want it to be as enjoyable as possible. We also realise that dental practices are not the most popular of places to visit and we wish to make your visit as relaxed and enjoyable as we can, but we need your assistance. Please turn off your mobile phone when entering the practice and enjoy the feeling that you can relax for a while.

Healthy Mouth

We want you to enjoy the feeling of a healthy mouth and the appearance of your teeth.

If you are happy because of your experience with us we can feel proud that we have helped you achieve what you want.

What we want for you

Our aim is for you to enjoy coming to see us. We want you to achieve dental health and feel confident in your smile

Dental Health

Dental health means different things to different people depending on their personal dental preferences.

Dental health for us means the following:

  • You have no dental decay in your teeth.

  • You have no pain from your teeth.

  • You have no active gum disease, bleeding or discomfort from your gums and all our gum measurements are within the accepted healthy range of 1-4 mm.

  • All fillings are seated correctly with no signs of extensive wear or worn margins.

  • All missing teeth are replaced with a suitable alternative to ensure that correct pressure and loading is applied to all the remaining natural teeth as they were designed to receive.

  • You have no pain, discomfort, locking or other problems with your jaw joints.

  • All children have correctly positioned teeth and jaws to prevent problems with wear, grinding, cleaning, gum disease, decay and jaw joint problems.

  • You are happy and confident with the appearance of your smile.

Our aim for your dental health:

  • To stabilize any active dental problems you may have, such as dental decay or gum disease.

  • Ensure all your current dental treatment is doing what it is supposed to.

  • Help you understand and show you how to prevent future dental problems.

  • Provide treatment to help you develop confidence in the health and appearance of your teeth and smile.

Confidence

Ever felt it difficult to smile or laugh due to embarrassment or being self conscious of your teeth. Whether your teeth are dark in colour, have dark coloured or metal fillings, stick out or are crossed over, we have a solution for your problem, allowing you to smile and laugh with confidence.

Brighter Smile

Tooth whitening is a very simple and effective technique to brighten up your smile. We place a special gel on your teeth to do this. There are two ways we can provide this either with our take home kit or using our one hour in house procedure.

Dark fillings

Are your fillings dark or metallic? Do they show when you smile? We can easily replace them with tooth coloured solutions. Filling material is an excellent choice for small to medium sized areas. Larger areas are best treated with ceramic restorations.

Discoloured or broken down teeth

If your teeth are discoloured badly or have large fillings that can start to break down causing more damage to the tooth, crowns or inlays are an excellent way of protecting the teeth from breaking down or to build up a badly broken down tooth. We prefer to use crowns or inlays made of a reinforced ceramic material which allows us to bond these to the teeth to get the maximum protection and strength possible.

Straight teeth

Teeth that are crossed over, sticking out or have gaps in between them can be difficult to clean, more likely to get cavities, gum disease and break. We can straighten them with one of many techniques available at the practice.

It is possible to see as young as four years old if a child will have problems with the position of their teeth. Most people have a problem with the position of their teeth because their jaws do not grow to the correct size, shape and position.

We can correct this by using a technique called Dentofacial Orthopaedics.

By using small plastic plates or thin, flexible, wire frameworks that connect to the teeth, the jaw shape can be gently corrected to get it back to the shape required to provide plenty of room to straighten the teeth.

The earlier the treatment is started the quicker and easier it is.

Once all the adult teeth are present Orthodontic treatment maybe required to get the best positioning of the teeth. To do this we will use fixed braces or the Invisalign system which is virtually invisible when being worn, and especially popular with adults.

Prevention is better than cure, isn’t it?

Prevention of dental disease is possible and relatively easy to achieve and only requires a small part of your time each day.

It is much better to prevent problems than to try to cure them, I think you will agree.

Prevention of dental problems requires a combined approach from both the dental team and our clients.

As providers of dental care we can only provide a small part of the effort required in prevention of dental disease.

We will be happy to show you how to prevent decay and gum disease by helping you learn how to care for your teeth as well as you can.

If you wish, we can help you identify the things that you eat, which are especially damaging.

Our influence ends at that point, the baton then passes to you and you require a desire to help yourself to use the information on a daily basis.

Prevention is 10% us and 90% up to you. We are always available to provide support and advice with your dental prevention programme.

      1. Making the most of your time

Your time is very important, and that makes it important to us.

We usually run to time, but if we do run late we will apologise if we keep you waiting.

Please ensure that you set aside enough time for your visit, including your travel time. Our appointment times are designed to give us the optimum time required to provide the high quality treatment that we wish to provide, and your treatment or the quality of the treatment will be affected if we are not given this optimum time.

We may therefore ask you to reschedule your appointments if we feel that this will happen for example if you arrive late for an appointment.

We like to complete your treatment in as few visits as possible; this means that you will not have to come back lots of times for your treatment. Some treatments have to have appointments set at certain intervals; we will inform you of this when you book your appointments.

      1. How we make your treatment pleasant.

We will provide you with either clear or dark glasses to protect your eyes.

If you wish you can watch a favourite DVD using our DVD goggles. We have a choice of music available for you to listen to at your visit. Please choose from our music menu.

You are in total control of your appointment. If you wish us to stop your treatment at any time, please raise your left hand and we will stop your treatment immediately.

We have developed many new techniques that help us to help you to enjoy treatment without pain and discomfort.

We have anaesthetic gels, so if you do need an anaesthetic injection, it will be more comfortable for you. We inject slowly and gently using anaesthetic that has been warmed to make it more comfortable.

We can if you want, however, do many treatments without injection, yet without pain.

Here’s how we do it …

Decay is dead, and removing it is not painful if we do not touch the live parts of your tooth.

So long as we only remove decayed or damaged tooth, it is not painful at all.

With old fashioned fillings, it was necessary to drill into live parts of your tooth to lock the filling in place.

We use white filling material which we join onto your tooth and make it unnecessary to drill into the live parts of the tooth.

Dentistry for life

With people living longer we feel that it is important to provide you with long term solutions for your dental needs.

Quick, cheap short-term fixes will cost you more in the long term and will not insure a long term future for the tooth. You use your teeth on average three times a day, placing very heavy pressure on them when you eat.

Your teeth help ensure that your jaw joint works correctly, and that the opening to your airway is set at the correct level.

Missing teeth mean more pressure is placed on the remaining teeth, increasing their chances of further damage or increasing the chances of damage to existing dental treatment.

The best way to ensure dental health for life is to prevent problems before they start.

Dental Hygiene

Dental problems can be caused by a build up of oral bacteria on the teeth and gums. The bacteria use sugars from our diet to survive, so good cleaning of the teeth and a good balanced low sugar diet will help you achieve dental health.

Tooth brushing will remove about 90% of all the oral bacteria from your teeth and gums. Even with excellent, thorough brushing not all bacteria will be removed due to the position of some teeth so additional products such as floss and interdental brushes will be required.

We have found that most people have been taught to brush their teeth by their parents or a primary school teacher.

Using a disclosing solution we can help guide you in your dental hygiene and advise you which dental hygiene products will be best for you. We feel that most people will benefit from using an electric toothbrush, especially one from the Sonicare range by Phillips.

An electric toothbrush allows you to concentrate on placing the brush head in the correct position. They will still need supplementing with other dental hygiene products such as interdental brushes and floss. We will help you select the correct size and combination of interdental brush, and show you the best places and ways to use dental floss.

Dental Treatment

If we have to provide any dental treatment we use the most advanced materials and dental techniques.

The latest white filling materials are strong, very natural and excellent in their appearance. We remove less healthy tooth tissue when we use this material and due to their advanced adhesive properties they help support the remaining natural tooth tissue.

We can still use the old style metal amalgam filling material but, where possible we prefer to use the white filling material.

When larger cavities or more damage has occurred to the tooth, filling materials will not fully support the teeth.

Ceramic (porcelain) restorations such as crowns or inlays provide a better long term treatment option. These treatments are bonded to the tooth so giving the remaining natural tooth full support.

      1. The problem with fillings

Most people would like to keep their teeth as long as possible. We have found that in the past, one of the major reasons that teeth are lost is that they break because they have been weakened by decay and drilling.

Each time a filling is replaced, it becomes bigger as more of your tooth is cut away.

Many surveys show that the average life of a silver filling is under 9 years, and a white filling, 5 years, so in your lifetime you can expect one filling to be replaced many times, and to gradually get bigger.

After the filling has been replaced two or three times, the tooth often dies, and this causes further problems.

So, for all but small cavities, it is often better to have a long term solution such as a Crown or Inlay, to stop the continual treatment and damage to your tooth.

For the smaller cavities, we prefer to use Glass Bonding and white resin composite, rather than metal fillings.

Crowns are often the answer

We use a newer kind of crown which fits over the tooth and only requires that the outer worn layer of enamel and decay be removed.

After they are prepared for caps, the teeth do not end up looking like little “pegs”, as they used to with the thicker, old fashioned kind of caps.

On front teeth we use tooth coloured ceramic to cap your teeth. Ceramic looks wonderful and it works very well on front teeth.

For back teeth, where the forces are much greater, we try to avoid it because it wears your opposing teeth.

Only on back teeth, where it doesn’t show, we like to use Gold (actually a hard gold/platinum alloy).

I know that may sound strange to you, but even now it is the longest lasting material we have. It bounces a little when it is bitten on, and it isn’t abrasive, so it is much kinder to your opposing teeth.

      1. How do our fees compare

For some things our fees are higher than those at an average dentist.

We do not, however, just give you average service!

For the long term solutions such as caps, implants and bridges, we are similar in cost to most good quality dentists in the centre of our capital cities.