Our comprehensive exam requires the necessary digital x-rays, intraoral pictures of your teeth, oral cancer & TMJ screening, and gum pocket charting of all your teeth. We will follow that with a dental cleaning. During this visit, we will also review your medical, dental and lifestyle/nutrition history. Our goal is to gather information that will help you fulfill your dental needs.
There will be time that a regular cleaning is not enough to keep our patient gum healthy. When there is so much deposit under the gum for a long time, that would irritate the gum and causing it to bleed and eventually destroy the gum fiber that holds the teeth firm. As a result, you will see deeper gum pocket and bone loss around the teeth. Deep cleaning of the gum is usually done under anesthetic so we can slip below the gum and remove the deposit that infected the gum. In cases where gum disease has advanced aggressively, we would augment deep cleaning with the use of Diode Laser to sterilize the gum pocket after scaling. We may even use medicaments like Arestin or Periochip to slowly release antibiotic right at the affected site. Gum treatment success depends not only the doctor but what our patient does at home daily. Good oral hygiene requires consistency and perseverance.
It is our belief that it is always best to preserve what we were given at birth. It really saddened us when we have to remove tooth structure due to caries or fracture. We only proceed to crown option when we see that the filling is more than half of the tooth, or filling with history of shortened lifespan or there is tooth fracture. Our promise to conserve and preserve will be applied most religiously here. In fact, our filling & crown procedures often take extra time because of so many extra steps we do to disinfect the tooth. We can proudly say we have prevented many teeth from having a root canal treatment because of our disinfection protocols.
We do perform most extraction here on site under local anesthesia. However if our patient wishes to be sedated, we would refer you out to nearby trusted oral surgeons. With all extractions, pain can be avoided if we take the proper medication at the prescribed time and home care instruction followed. If bone grafting is needed, we will advise you ahead of time.
It is the most ideal way to restore missing teeth, much more conservation than doing a bridge, and much more comfortable than partial denture. We usually refer our patient out to our trusted and well-trained oral surgeons who routinely do implants every day. Our surgeons will place the implant. We will coordinate with them about your interim prosthesis during the healing phase. Please keep in mind this is only necessary in the esthetic zone. Once healed and certified that the implant is fully grafted, we will place the implant crowns or whatever prosthesis you need.
There are times when we see our patient a bit later than we would have liked and the tooth had already been compromised, i.e. caries reaching the nerve chamber, there are certain options we can approach.
1. If the tooth has no previous history of prolonged pain and there is no root abscess and there is a chance of keeping the tooth viable, we will try our best to save the nerve by applying a medicament (MTA) directly over the nerve. This procedure is still fairly new and some insurance do not recognize it yet. Our position is that it has worked on all the patients we have tried so far in the past 2-3 years and it is definitely worth a try.
2. If the tooth has history of pain and evidence of an abscess, a root canal treatment will be needed to keep the tooth. Root canal treatment is a procedure in which the nerve tissue is removed from the tooth and then it is sealed with a cement and a root filler. Subsequently, the tooth will need a buildup and a crown to protect and restore the tooth back to full function. Root canal treatment if done properly will eliminate pain and allow us to keep the tooth rather than extracting it.
It is the traditional way of restoring missing teeth. Now a day, partial or full dentures are much more sophisticated and have a variety of material choice to make it more esthetic and comfortable. You do not have to see metal. We will go over your different options. If properly done, a denture can improve your facial/lip profile, give you instant effect of derma filler and restore your youthfulness.
There are so many ways to make your smile beautiful for any budget. It can be simple and inexpensive as whitening your teeth or recontouring and blending the shape of your teeth. It can also be more complex should you want veneers (a super thin porcelain piece that would be cemented over your natural tooth to give you the shape and color you have always wanted). Dr. Nguyen had taken 100 plus hour of training just on cosmetic dentistry and she can guide you through a plethora of treatment options and choose the one that is right for you and your budget.
We offer Invisalign and Short-Term Ortho (STO) for adults and teens. For children under twelve years old, if appropriate, we offer appliance option to correct mild functional problems or as a phase I ortho treatment.
TMJ pain can be quite stressful and ironically often triggered by stress. Overworked and high muscle tension can disrupt the delicate balance between muscle-jaw-teeth, so can grinding and/or clenching . The solution usually involves some initial medication to reduce pain, time for healing and some physical therapy, and prevention via occlusal adjustment and the correct appliance for your situation.
647 S. Bernardo Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Phone: 408-735-7535
Fax: 408-735-7536
Email: bi@cherrychasedental.com
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