General & Preventative

What is Preventative Dentistry?

Preventative dentistry is an ideal way to ensure that dental problems never occur in the first place. Although we spend a lot of time repairing damaged teeth, we would much prefer you never had these problems to begin with! Preventative checks and treatment will allow you to maintain excellent health as well as prevent time consuming and expensive dental procedures in the future. Routine dental checkups and teeth cleaning is important to maintain the health of your jaws, teeth, gums and mouth. With regular examinations, we can help you monitor and treat any issues before they become worse.

Why might I need X-Rays?

While we perform our examinations under bright lights and high magnification to look for early signs of tooth decay, there may be damage occurring under the surface of your tooth that cannot be seen visually. We generally recommend routine x-rays of your back teeth every 12 to 30 months to detect any early, reversible signs of damage.

What can I do at home to prevent dental problems?

Preventing cavities in the your teeth is something we would like achieve in all of our patients. We have disposable demonstration electric toothbrushes to help us review your toothbrushing technique, and can help you improve your home hygiene. We can also recommend other cleaning accessories which can improve the effectiveness of your home hygiene, including interproximal brushes, floss handles, special brushes, air or water flossers. We can assess your diet habits to see if we can make small changes to help prevent tooth decay. In certain cases, we can also assess the protective quality of your saliva which usually helps to wash away and neutralise decay forming acid and ensure it is working at it’s proper capacity.

What are Fissure Sealants?

Special coatings, known as fissure sealants, can be placed on vulnerable back teeth in only a few minutes. These areas of your teeth can be quite difficult, or even impossible to clean adequately on your own, and especially so for children. We can apply a resin coating to your teeth to prevent food sticking without requiring any drills or needles.