Routine Dental Care

Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Dental Care

A regular dental checkup offers patients professional dental cleaning services to detect and prevent tooth infections while helping maintain healthy teeth. Regular dental checkups are a standard service offered at Dr. Morsy Dental Services.

No matter the age, most people tend to avoid the subject when hearing that they have another dental checkup soon. However, regular dental checkups are crucial to maintaining oral health. With a dental checkup every six months, patients can receive the professional care they need for their teeth.

During a checkup, we can not only clean your teeth and gums, but can also look for signs of any oral health issues. If an issue should be found, we can treat it as soon as possible. We can also go over effective cleaning methods and make recommendations to help keep teeth healthy.

If you want to keep your teeth healthy with professional cleaning and examination services, schedule a dental checkup with us today.

Why You Need a Dental Checkup

There is a direct link between visiting the dentist and keeping your natural teeth. If you want to ensure that you have a full mouth of healthy teeth, then visit the dentist. Gallup Poll released a study in 2014 finding that the states with the highest percentage of dental visits also had the lowest percentage of adult tooth loss.

For example, in Connecticut, 74 percent of adults visited the dentist in the past year, and their rate of adult tooth loss was only 9 percent. On the other hand, only 57 percent of adults in West Virginia visited the dentist in the past year, and 37 percent of adults have complete tooth loss.

The correlation is clear and should prompt you to give us a call. If you do lose your teeth, we can help by providing you with replacements in the form of dental implants, bridges, or dentures. Still, there is no need for you to experience significant tooth loss when you visit our office regularly for preventative care. Saving your teeth, after all, is less time-consuming and less expensive.

FAQs

How can I ease my fears about dental care without medication?

When you visit our dental office, we can discuss ways that you can prevent experiencing anxiety while receiving dental care. Give us a call to go over any and all methods for dealing with dental anxiety that we can offer. In some cases, all a patient needs to do is play music on headphones during the appointment. In other cases, we may need medication or another method to deal with dental anxiety.

How can I prepare for my dentist appointment?

Another easy way to calm your fears is to visit our Riverside dental office and meet with Dr. Morsy prior to the actual appointment. Taking the time to tour our office, where you can sit in the dentist chair and have a conversation, will allow you to become familiar with our staff and office environment. After this meeting, when you do have your teeth cleaned, you are doing so in an atmosphere that you feel comfortable in with friendly and familiar faces. During your consultation, we can also discuss what you can expect from a teeth cleaning or a specific procedure. This will help you to mentally prepare for how long it will take, what dental tools we will use, what you may feel during the process and what the recovery period will be, if any. At Dr. Morsy Dental Services, we find that the more informed our patients are the more comfortable and relaxed they feel. This one appointment can help to alleviate the fear of dentists that you are experiencing.

Will I be asleep when sedated?

Typically not. Sleep dentistry is usually reserved for oral surgery and lengthy procedures. Sedation dentistry will help you relax and can make you drowsy, so some patients do nod off. However, with our sedation methods, you are still in control of your body and are technically not put to sleep.

Can everyone use sedation dentistry?

To determine if you are healthy enough for sedation (most people are), we recommend that you schedule an appointment with our California dental office. We will meet with you to discuss the type of sedation that will be best for your procedure and the level of dental anxiety that you are experiencing.

How is sedation dentistry administered?

The most common form of sedation is taking a pill an hour before the procedure begins. One pill can help you to feel entirely relaxed and eliminate your fear of dentists. Most procedures, like teeth cleaning or fixing a simple cavity, do not necessarily hurt. With sedation, many people do not require additional medication. However, if you would like pain medication as well, we can give it to you after the sedation has taken effect.

Will I be able to move around like normal?

Yes, with sedation dentistry you can continue to engage in conversation and respond to commands; but your response times may be slightly delayed and your mind not as clear as normal. This is why we recommend that you either have someone drive you home or wait until it has worn off completely before driving home after the appointment.

Are there any side effects of sedation dentistry?

Most of the time, the sedation goes away within an hour of your procedure being complete. If you are more heavily sedated or put to sleep for oral surgery, it can take a couple of hours to feel normal but this is rare. In our Riverside dental office, we use the least amount of sedation to help you to feel completely relaxed and comfortable. Thus, it is effective without staying in your system for too long.

Can children benefit from sedation dentistry?

Yes, children may need sedation when going through large amounts of dental work so that they can hold still long enough for a dentist to complete the dental work. This is a unique specialty and not offered at every dentist office.

Are there other ways to make dental work more comfortable?

Yes. Laser dentistry is transforming how professionals complete dental procedures. When you visit our dental office, you can be confident that we will use the latest technology available to make your procedure more comfortable. Lasers allow us to do so because the laser energy is fine and can target small spaces without irritating the surrounding tissue. We can also reduce discomfort and the recovery time thanks to dental lasers. The dental lasers are also less invasive than traditional dental tools. With the dental laser, there will be less bleeding and swelling than normal. Dental lasers can also help treat tooth decay, gum disease, and has applications in restorative procedures. If you want a more comfortable experience and to reduce your dental anxiety, we highly recommend visiting a laser dentistry office. To learn about the procedures that we perform using lasers, call (951) 686-7420 and schedule an appointment. At Dr. Morsy Dental Services, we find that many of our patients no longer need sedation or pain medication because the common factors that create fear of dentists are eliminated. For example, the noise, heat, and vibration that is traditionally associated with the dental drill is not present when using lasers.