Remember this case? Click here to review what we covered. This young lady had a space that was difficult to close. She was referred to me to help with her treatment. We placed bonded restorations on her two front teeth and sent her back to the orthodontist to close the spaces. Since the teeth were the ideal size after being bonded he simply had to close the gap.
Before bonding:
And after:
Here’s another photo I recently took in the office.
There’s always extra ’stuff’ that gathers on our computers. And since it doesn’t seem to cause a problem, we just leave it. But over time this can really take up a lot of space on our hard drives. To free up some of this space, try this utility: clean up
As you know, Windows has many programs running in the background that start automatically when you start or reboot. These are called Services. Many of these just aren’t needed for most users. They slow the system down and potentially open your computer to security risks.
Take a look at this site. It tells you how to find these Services and if you should leave them alone or turn them off.
Here’s hoping that you have a peaceful and joyous holiday season with your families. Enjoy!!
I’ve said that a dental implant is the best possible treatment for this situation, but some would ask why not a bridge?
A few brief reasons. Although an implant is more work (eg: a few surgery appointments, and other visits to make a crown), the ultimate product, the tooth, is LESS maintenance than a bridge. There’s also less chance of trouble or problems with an implant. The tooth behind has a perfect-fitting crown which does NOT need to be replaced. A bridge would require the destruction of this crown and the fabrication of a new one that is part of a bridge. Also, the tooth in front of the fractured area would need a crown, and it is not in need of any work at this time.
Finally, the patient did NOT want a bridge…under ANY circumstances. So the decision in this case was easy!
Gum surgery or an implant…how to decide? For this tooth it’s pretty easy. Look how far under the gum the tooth broke off:
Without getting into too many details, the crack is SO deep that gum surgery would not be possible. For this situation, a dental implant is the best possible solution. We’ll talk about the dental implant process later.
One last thing. Why not a bridge instead of the implant?
So what happened here?
The tooth was originally crowned due to fractures/cracking that started because of a large silver filling, which we’ve examined in other posts like this one. The cracks may have continued, slowly, inside the tooth (similar to a crack in a car’s windshield).
When they got to the nerve, the tooth became symptomatic and needed the root canal. But the cracks kept going, and the tooth completely fracture off inside the crown.
How’s this for a situation? This tooth had a very nice crown that had been in place for over 5 years. Suddenly it becomes very bite and thermal sensitive (hot and cold bothered it alot!). A root canal was completed, and that relieved the symptoms. Then, a few weeks later, this happened:
Here’s the tooth we’ve been talking about AFTER the gum surgery. Notice how you can now see the full extent of the fractured area? This will make possible restoring the tooth with a crown. It now has a temporary and is awaiting the new crown.
