Oral health is important to maintain, to prevent other health issues throughout the body. Your teeth can last a lifetime with proper home care and regular dental check-ups. You can keep your teeth and gums healthy by brushing twice a day with fluoride toothpaste, flossing daily and seeing your dentist regularly for professional cleanings and check-ups.
Gum recession due to periodontal disease, decay around old fillings, sensitivity and dry mouth, if left untreated can cause damage. Missing teeth and existing health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, or cancer can all affect your oral health.
The following is a checklist that indicates that a visit to the dentist is required:
- Your teeth are sensitive to hot or cold
- You don’t like the way your smile or teeth look
- You have persistent bad breath or bad taste in your mouth
- You are pregnant
- You have pain or swelling in your mouth, face or neck
- You have difficulty chewing or swallowing
- Your mouth is often dry
- You have a family history or gum disease or tooth decay
- You have a medical condition such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eating disorders, or are HIV positive
- Your jaw sometimes pops or is painful when opening and closing, chewing or when you first wake up; you have an uneven bite
- You have a spot or sore that doesn’t look or feel right in your mouth and it isn’t going away
- You want to smile with confidence for that special someone!
When you first arrive and meet our staff, you’ll fill out your new patient paperwork. This helps our team get to know you better. We ask that you arrive 5 minutes early to complete your paperwork. Or, you can get a head start by filling out your patient forms now. You can download our Patient Information form on the right hand side of this page (on desktop computer only). Complete the form and bring it along to your appointment.
The Child Dental Benefits Schedule is a Medicare child dental program that provides eligible children and teenagers aged 2 to 17 with up to $1000, capped over two consecutive calendar years, for basic dental services.
Eligible families, teenagers and approved care organisations will receive a letter from the Australian Government to confirm eligibility. If your child is eligible, all you need to do is call us to book an appointment. We will confirm your child’s balance through the Medicare portal.
You can find more information about the Child Dental Benefits Schedule here.
Yes, we offer payment plans through DentiCare so that you can spread the cost of your treatment across easy to manage payments — with no interest!
DentiCare dental payment plans can be used for a wide range of general dentistry, cosmetic dentistry and orthodontic treatments. You can use a payment plan for teeth whitening, dental implants, crowns and veneers and most other dental procedures.
Find out more here.
When teeth start hurting, it’s already too late to apply the easy and economic fix.
Teeth start aching for numerous reasons, but more often than not, once the nerve is involved the options to save the tooth are greatly reduced, normally restricting the procedure to either an extraction or root canal treatment. If caught in the early stages, decay can be fixed with a simple filling. Bleeding gums is another early warning sign that something is amiss. Gum disease is a painless disease and caught early enough can be controlled, left too long the damage is irreversible. Plus it could be damaging your heart.
The best advice we can offer is get regular dental checkups. Our friendly professionals can give you a treatment plan and options to obtain a healthy mouth.
The answer is yes. In fact, it is very important. Hormones circulating in your body can affect your gums. Your gums are more likely to bleed and there is a greater chance of them becoming inflamed or infected. You’re also more likely to get a build-up of plaque on your teeth. Your dentist will advise if there is any treatment that can be delayed until after the birth of your child.
There are often issues happening underneath the tooth surface that are not visible to the naked eye.
5 reasons dentists take x-rays:
- Look for decay between teeth.
- Check for bone loss associated with gum disease.
- Check for decay under fillings.
- Look for infection at the tip of the root.
- Examine the area before procedures.
There are a number of reasons why a tooth may crack, including tooth decay, trauma or injury, a weakened tooth structure, grinding of the teeth or a stress fracture. If the crack goes untreated it will spread and deepen like a crack in glass and a part of the tooth may break. Unfortunately, fractured teeth do not heal like the other bones in our body.
Sometimes they appear to get better, only to suddenly get worse.
Symptoms of cracked teeth include erratic pain when chewing, possibly with release of biting pressure, or sensitivity to hot or cold temperature extremes. In many cases the pain may come and go, and the dentist may have trouble locating which tooth is causing you discomfort.
If a large piece of the tooth breaks off, it can hurt because the nerve inside the tooth may be damaged and exposed. The reason it hurts to bite, when you have a cracked tooth is that your tooth is flexing, which microscopically stimulates the nerve of the tooth. These hairline cracks open and close, which applies pressure on tubules, that run down the nerve of the tooth causing fluid to push and pull on the nerve, resulting in pain. The nerve in the cracked tooth is also being exposed to bacterial toxins that become inflamed making it sensitive and allowing infection to spread to the nerve and one underneath, which results in an abscess. Excessive sensitivity to hot and cold is a classic symptom of nerve inflammation.
A small crack can be treated effectively but a bigger one could require root canal treatment or an extraction. The only real solution is to bind the whole tooth together with a crown, so that when chewing force is applied, the tooth moves as a whole rather than splitting it apart.
Your dentist may recommend a crown to:
- Replace a large filling when there isn’t enough tooth remaining
- Protect a weak tooth from fracturing
- Restore a fractured tooth
- Attach a bridge
- Cover a discoloured or poorly shaped tooth
- Cover a tooth that has had root canal treatment
Dentists use crowns when rebuilding broken or decayed teeth. It is like a glove that covers the tooth and holds it together, protecting it from further damage. They are also used to strengthen and improve the appearance of the tooth.
Some teeth that seem to require the protection of a crown never experience any problems, but it is possible that the tooth in need of the crown will crack. The cracks in teeth do not repair themselves or heal over, and often will in time, increase in size due to repeated exposure to heavy biting forces.
Your dentist will recommend fissure sealants to prevent dental decay forming in the fissures of the teeth.
Fissures are the grooves that naturally occur on the biting surfaces of the teeth. If the grooves are deep or narrow, these areas cannot be cleaned effectively through brushing with a toothbrush and become a haven for bacteria that cause tooth decay. The bacteria accumulates and eats through the enamel of the tooth (the outer most protective layer). Once inside the tooth these bugs can hollow out a tooth from the inside out, with little or no symptoms until the cavity is very large and close to the nerve. Once the bacteria have breached the enamel, the tooth then requires a filling.
Fissure sealants prevent this from happening by sealing up the grooves of the teeth making these areas easier to keep clean and plaque free.