OUR SERVICES
At Unique Dental of Putnam we pledge to always strive for the highest standards of excellence and use state-of-the-art procedures to provide the quality dental services our patients deserve.
Cosmetic Dentistry
Cosmetic Dentistry can have dramatic results on your overall appearance; even the smallest step can boost your confidence, self-esteem, and make you want to smile more. With modern advances in dentistry, cosmetic procedures can range from a basic color correction to replacing missing teeth, and everything in between.
Bonding & White Fillings
Bonding is a popular method to fill in or cover up defects in teeth with a white composite resin. An adhesive gel is placed on the tooth and the resin is molded and sculpted over it, then hardened with UV light and polished.
Bonding can be used to fill teeth after the removal of cavities, or to cover stains, cracks, discolorations, chips, or gaps in teeth. It is a technological improvement over highly-visible silver amalgam fillings and applications usually lasts more than 10 years.
TMJ Treatment
Diagnosis is an important step before treatment. The TMJ dental examination includes checking the joints and muscles for tenderness, clicking, popping or difficulty moving. Depending on the diagnosis, the dentist may recommend several options for treating your TMJ.
Lifelike Crowns and Bridges
Sometimes teeth began to weaken, crack or visibly decay, but remain well-anchored and firmly in place. Bonding or filling may not be sufficient and in these cases a crown is often recommended.
With a crown, the original tooth will be filed down to the enamel and left in place and capped with a crown of porcelain, gold or porcelain fused with metal. The color is matched to the other teeth and the crown will appear to be a regular tooth in your smile.
Dental bridges are a way to replace missing teeth by creating a segment that anchors to two existing teeth to “bridge” the gap between them.
Made from porcelain, gold, allows, or metal, bridges require the two teeth on either side of the missing tooth to be filed down into “abutments” that will hold the bridge in place, much like a pair of crowns with a third tooth joining them from the middle.
The bridge itself will be created in a specialized lab while a temporary bridge is put in its place. Once the final bridge is put in place, you will need to eat soft foods for a few days while the bridge settles, but after that, it will function and feel normal.
If you are missing a tooth, please strongly consider having it replaced. Not only are there aesthetic disadvantage from the missing tooth, but that gap could also harm your mouth and jaw and make it difficult to eat or speak properly.
Periodontal Care
Besides our prolific attention to the your teeth and keeping them clean and polished, we also take time to help our patients develop better oral hygiene habits at home. If we detect telltale signs of hygienic shortcomings we will recommend changes to your routine to improve your oral health. We can also suggest preventative measures like dental sealants or nightguards if you’re at risk of TMJ or bruxism.
Some gum diseases like gingivitis may need a root scaling or planing procedure to prevent long-term damage like bone loss or tooth loss.
Oral Cancer Screenings
During a dental exam your doctor will check your neck and oral tissues for lumps, colored patches, and sore spots to help detect oral cancer while it is easiest to treat. People who smoke and drink regularly are at the highest risk of developing oral cancel.
Scaling and Root Planing
Scaling and root planing is a non-surgical procedure where plaque and tartar are removed from below the gum line. Special slim tools clean the root surfaces of plaque and tartar and smooth down the surface. This prevents bacteria from getting a foothold in the gums.
Teeth Whitening
Modern life offers a number of ways to stain our teeth, including coffee, wine, food and smoking. This can even happen to people who brush regularly. Teeth whitening restores the natural color to the teeth and can even be made whiter than normal.
We accomplish this by creating impressions of your teeth and using them to make a set of whitening trays. You can wear these trays for less than an hour a day for a few days and receive a dramatic increase in whiteness to your smile.
Please contact us to see if whitening is right for you.
Porcelain Veneers
Veneers are thin ceramic shells that hug the existing tooth to correct the appearance of teeth that are stained, cracked, chipped, improperly spaced or misaligned.
First, the client comes in and has their teeth evaluated for the veneers. The traditional process takes up to two weeks to fabricate the veneers and they are placed in a follow up visit. Temporary veneers can be placed during that gap.
Ask your dentist for more information about veneers and to learn how they work.
Professional Dental Cleaning
A professional dental cleaning at least twice a year can improve your oral health, reports the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD), an organization of general dentists dedicated to continuing dental education.
The AGD strongly recommends that a dentist or hygienist perform a dental cleaning every six months. This professional dental cleaning reinforces the home-care oral health regimen of brushing and flossing and gives the dentist an opportunity to locate areas in the mouth that may need special attention.
During a dental cleaning, you’ll receive diagnostic and preventive services from your dentist as well as any needed educational information.
Dental Implants
Dental implants are simply an artificial tooth put in the place of a missing tooth. They are an alternative to a bridge, where the teeth on either side of the gap are removed and crowned.
To place a dental implant, a screwed is fashioned to the jaw bone for a sturdy foundation. The process requires making an incision in the gum and several dental implants can be placed at once if needed.
The implant will take 3-6 months to heal and have the jaw bone form around it. During this time a temporary crown can be placed before it is replaced with the final artificial tooth.
Dentures and Partials
Dentures are a removable replacement for missing teeth and can replace both full and partial sets of teeth. You can smile confidently again with the help of a custom, natural-looking full or partial denture created just for you. Dentures are a great solution if you are missing some teeth because the denture fills the gaps in your smile and helps make talking and eating easier.
For full sets, any remaining teeth are removed. There are two common approaches for full sets.
With Conventional Full Dentures, all the teeth are removed and the tissue is given time to heal. This typically takes several months and the patient is without teeth during that time. Once the healing is complete, the dentures are created.
With Immediate Full Dentures measurements are performed before the teeth are removed, and dentures are ready immediately afterward. The gum tissue will change shape as it heals and the dentures will need to be tightened later.
Intraoral Cameras and Photography
An Intraoral camera can significantly increase precision in diagnosis. This highly advanced piece of equipment allows you to see what the dentist sees.
This tiny video camera enables us to zoom in on one tooth with 25 times magnification, or give you visual access to your entire mouth. A monitor displays and pinpoints potential problems such as cavities, broken fillings, plaque, and other important factors.
Digital Photography enables us to review your current smile and how you look in the eye of the camera. This is very helpful in designing your beautiful new smile or assessing the needs of the patient.
Root Canals
Root canals have a notorious reputation as a long, scary procedure. The Alfred Hitchcock of dentistry. Fortunately for the patient, medical technology has made this important procedure much quicker and less painful than it was in the past when it earned its dark reputation.
Endodontics are dental procedures that deal with the nerve endings in the root of teeth. Sometimes teeth become infected and those nerves need to be removed to prevent forming an abscess that could lead to loss of parts of the jaw bone.
In a root canal, a local anesthetic is applied and the dentist drills into the tooth, creating an opening that leads to the nerve. The dentist will use this opening to remove infected tissue and will typically replace the tooth with a crown. After the procedure some pain is normal, but can typically be treated with over the counter medicine.
Implant Restorations
Dental Implants are a new alternative in tooth replacement. The procedure consists of two stages: placement of a replacement tooth root at your dental specialist’s office, followed by placement of a tooth replacement (crown) at our office.
There are now a wide variety of dental implant placement procedures that vary in duration and materials. Any implant procedure is preceded by a detailed consultation and case planning with your dental team.
Oral Surgery
Oral surgery treats a wide range of diseases and conditions, including:
- Tooth loss
- Wisdom teeth extraction
- Temporomandibular joint disorders (TMJ)
- Treatment of endodontal diseases
- Dental Implants
- and more…
At Putnam Dental will work to ensure your comfort during your oral surgery procedure, including the use of numbing agents.
Sports Dentistry
Sports dentistry is one of the most recent and upcoming field in dentistry. It mainly includes the prevention and management of athletics-related orofacial injuries and associated oral diseases. Our team of dentists assists athletes in the prevention, treatment, and diagnosis of oral injuries.
Sedation Dentistry
Our sedation dentistry program was designed to offer fearful patients a safe, comfortable means of receiving the treatment they need. Using a variety of techniques, including Conscious Sedation or Oral Sedation, we help our patients relax before and during their dental procedures so that they come away feeling more at ease with the notion of in-office oral care.