We realize that dental insurance is complex and our office will do everything possible to help you understand and make the most of your dental insurance benefits. We will complete and submit all the necessary insurance forms to maximize reimbursement to which you are entitled and will work diligently to make this happen as quickly as possible.
Please keep in mind that your specific policy is an agreement between you and your insurance company. You will be responsible for your total obligation should your insurance benefits result in less coverage that anticipated. Our staff will gladly submit a pre-treatment estimate to your insurance company so that you will know what you benefits will be before the procedure is started.
For your convenience, We accept cash, personal checks, money orders and all major credit cards. Payment is expected at the time services are performed. When more extensive dental care is necessary, financial arrangements can be made with out office.
Root canal treatment disinfects the nerve canals inside your tooth. It is imperative that these canals remain free of bacteria. A crown seals the access to the nerve chamber and keeps bacteria out. There are other reasons too: Root canal treated teeth are vulnerable to fracture. Also, root canal treated teeth often discolor over time. A crown will protect the tooth and prevent hide discoloration, maintaining a beautiful and healthy tooth.
All our instruments are treated using a very strict protocol to assure absolute cleanliness and sterility for your safety. First, instruments are brush-scrubbed with soap and water. Next they are ultrasonically cleaned in a disinfecting solution. This assures immaculate instruments on a microscopic level. Finally, the instruments are sealed in a sterile pouch and processed through our autoclave sterilizer or chemiclave sterilizer assuring complete sterility.
The sterilization efficacy is monitored with spore tests to verify sterility to OSHA and hospital surgical standards. Each sterile pouch also has a sterility sensor on it to demonstrate that the package has been sterilized.
Rest assured that our protocol is rock solid. In all our history, not once has there been a mixup or an incident of infection transfer or even potential infection transfer. There are no cracks in the system, and no instrument could ever be confused with a non-sterile one.
The answer is almost always YES. Much improvement in health and aesthetics can be achieved with white fillings or porcelain. But the reason has nothing to do with mercury. It has to do with temperature and bacteria. Please read our Amalgam page for a detailed explanation.
If your reason is due to the mercury scare, then its probably not necessary to change your fillings. But if your silver fillings are older than 10 years, then they need to be changed for health reasons. And of course, if you want to improve the beauty of your smile, then changing them is a good choice.
Studies show that some mercury is in fact released from amalgam fillings. Most of this occurs when the filling is still fresh. However, the amount of mercury released from amalgam fillings is quite small. In fact some reports say that the amount of mercury you consume every day from eating and breathing is more than that released from amalgam fillings.
Amalgam means a mix of metals. The filling material is made with a powder form of a few metals (silver, copper, tin, zinc) and a liquid form of mercury. The purpose of the mercury is to chemically bond to the other powdered metals causing a reaction which hardens the mixture into a solid metal to fill the tooth..
Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, and the only chemical that can cause the hardening reaction for amalgam fillings. After the reaction is complete, no liquid mercury remains. The mercury becomes chemically bound and trapped in solid form.
If you havent finished your antibiotic course, the infection may now be under control, but it is not necessarily gone. The part of the infection that was eliminated with the initial dose of antibiotics was the most susceptible bacteria (the bacteria that were easy to kill). If you stop taking the antibiotics before ALL the bacteria are killed, the ones that are left (the stronger ones) can cause the infection to re-grow (blow up). But this time, since the infection is made of stronger, more antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the infection will be worse and antibiotics may no longer work.
Yes we do. Some patients feel more comfortable under the light sedation of nitrous oxide gas, and we are happy to accommodate them. Depending on the length of the session, there is an additional charge for nitrous oxide.
Good Oral Hygiene By maintaining a clean mouth with good oral hygiene, your fillings, crowns, and bridges will last much longer. Decay and gum disease caused by poor oral hygiene are the major cause of a restorations failure.
What You Eat Take special care when eating hard foods such as candy or ice. These hard foods can easily crack natural teeth as well as crowns or bridges. Sugar, especially when coupled with poor oral hygiene, can often lead to decay and failure of a crown or bridge. Avoid sugar in your diet.
If you take good care of your teeth, both your natural teeth and your crowns and bridges will last you a long time. In general, crowns and bridges have an expected lifespan of about 10-15 years. In a very healthy mouth, the lifespan is often much longer than that. Some crowns and bridges last 20-30 years, and some an entire lifetime. The life of a crown also depends on the condition of the tooth before the crown was placed.