There was also a new room of dental equipment that was put in during the renovations. Everyone has loved the new furnishings!

Here’s the tooth with most of the cavity cleaned out. It was REALLY big! And again, no symptoms with hot, cold, or bite. The ONLY way to have found this was with a dental x-ray.

So here’s the idea. This patient had extreme recession on a number of front teeth. The gum specialist wanted a ‘landmark’ to be able to graft toward, but these teeth had long-ago lost the ‘bump’ on the tooth surface that would differentiate the enamel from the root surface. Here’s a closer look at the problem….NOW you can see what I mean by extreme recession!

Here’s a better view of the fracture. This tooth had been damaged many years ago and was never a cosmetic issue for mom or the daughter. But now that the teeth are SO perfect it has become REALLY obvious!

Yes, it’s a problem for ANY office or home computer that has internet access. So we’re VERY careful about what sites we visit and keeping our virus security updated. Having said that, there’s a new virus (isn’t there ALWAYS a new one?) that you should be aware of. It impersonates a Windows Activation screen. Read more about it here.

You know how you get those ‘fake’ looking e-mails asking for personal information? It’s of course called ‘phishing’. Some of these can look VERY real and are hard to distinguish if it’s actually legitimate. Here’s a site where you can take a quiz and see how good you are at determining the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ e-mails. I got 7 out of 10….how about you?

Click here

This is going to gross out a few people, and for that I’m sorry. But look at where the cavity is located. It is in the MIDDLE of the tooth. So it had to have started on the biting surface, but look at the previous post. Again, there’s no obvious staining or ‘dark spots’ on the surface of this tooth. This a perfect example of a cavity getting in through a deep groove in a tooth and continuing without being seen.

Here’s another more obvious example. You can see a dark ’shadow’ inside the tooth below. But look at the grooves. There’s not even any obvious staining! Wait until you see how large THIS cavity was!

The grooves are cleaned out, the cavity removed, and a tooth-colored filling is placed. The material not only blends well with the surrounding color, but it is ‘bonded’ into place. This helps decrease potential sensitivity afterwards and will dramatically improve the longevity of this filling.

Here’s a photo of the teeth in the previous blog. These teeth have staining in the grooves, and there is a cavity present. The smallest portion of the cavity is what you see on the surface. The actual cavity travels fairly deep within the structure of these teeth.