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Implant Progress, Part 4

Earlier this August, I wrote a blog as a second instalment on an anterior implant case. The patient lost her upper left front tooth due to a severe cavity in the root (caused by external resorption). Subsequently, the tooth was extracted, and a Straumann BLX implant was surgically placed in the extraction socket. An exogenous bone graft (freeze-dried bone particles…
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The Latest Technologies to Make Implant Placement

There are new techniques and technology that Affinity Dental Care uses to make implant placement easier. The socket shield technique is a “newer” technique used during immediate implant placement (remove a hopeless tooth and replace it with an implant right after the extraction) in the anterior region to preserve the integrity of the periodontium and the thin buccal bone that…
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Implant Therapy Part 2

This blog is a continuation of the last blog on implant therapy. This time I am going to talk about prostheses supported by implants. The prostheses that implants can support are a crown, a bridge or a denture (hence called overdenture). The fees for implants and prostheses are usually high because of the expensive costs of the many machines, equipment,…
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Implant progress continues

In October 2020, I wrote a blog on a patient whose upper front central incisor (tooth #21) had external resorption. The resorption was extensive and rendered the tooth hopeless in prognosis. Different options were presented and discussed – endodontic treatment and extraction with a fixed bridge, a removable denture, or an implant-supported crown as the final prosthesis. Another factor we…
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Implant therapy, Part 1

There are a few reasons implant therapy is wanted by a patient or recommended by the patient's dentist. The reasons for having an implant procedure are: 1) To replace a missing tooth 2) To improve the ability to chew 3) To prevent adjacent teeth from drifting 4) To make the removable denture more stable If you are missing your tooth/teeth…
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White filling resin with no Bisphenol-A

Like Affinity Dental Care, most dentists nowadays do not use silver amalgam fillings anymore because of the mercury content in this material. We only use composite resin for the fillings in both anterior and molar teeth to avoid mercury alloy. We like composite resin because of other advantages as well – tooth coloured, translucency that makes it more life-like, less…
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New Dental Implant

Modern dental implants are almost all made of titanium metal inserted into the jaw bone to support artificial teeth made with tooth-like materials. The material could be porcelain, lithium disilicate, composite resin, acrylic or zirconia. There are a few implants made with zirconium oxide, however. The titanium implants are usually greyish metallic, and the zirconium oxide ones are white. Titanium…
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Kids’ teeth grinding during sleep

Sleep bruxism in children is characterized by grinding and involuntary teeth clenching. It is natural to be concerned if you hear your child grinding their teeth in their sleep. Bruxism in children lasts about four seconds and can occur up to six times per hour. Typically, the parents notice the condition first because they can hear the grinding noises at…
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Safe Mercury Fillings Removal

Dental silver filling is a filling material used to fill cavities. It is also called dental silver amalgam filling. Dental amalgam is a mixture of metals consisting of liquid mercury (about 50%) and a powdered alloy composed of silver (about 25%), tin (about 14%), zinc (about 8%) and copper. The liquid mercury reacts with the three metals to form a…
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Airway Dentistry

I recently heard the term airway dentistry, and I was curious about what that exactly is. I have been researching and noticed that it is just another term for dentistry that focuses on the mouth's structure and how those impacts breathing. It involves looking for signs of sleep breathing disorder like tooth wear, the position of the tongue and the…