When your smile isn’t at its best, other aspects of your life can be negatively influenced as well. Maybe it’s suddenly more difficult to chew your dinner without discomfort, or maybe an injured tooth has you hiding your smile in family photos. At Sage Family Dentistry, our team wants to help patients recover from these issues as soon as possible with our available restorative dentistry services. Dr. Sage can rebuild teeth that are decayed, cracked, or even lost altogether in attractive, long-lasting ways! Please contact our Seattle, WA practice today if you have any questions, or if you’re ready to schedule a first visit.
Dental Crowns & Bridges
Our restorations are precisely designed to be an ideal match for your one-of-a-kind smile. Crowns, for instance, are meant to rebuild teeth that are weakened, decayed, injured, or otherwise compromised. It will cover the tooth’s entire visible structure, preserving what remains while also revitalizing its natural look and strength. Alternatively, bridges can replace missing teeth that appear consecutively. We’ll anchor them in place over adjacent teeth so that the restoration feels sturdy and reliable.
Tooth-Colored Fillings
Tooth-colored fillings are a big improvement over traditional amalgam for several reasons. The most obvious one is that they don’t have a dark, unnatural appearance; instead, the composite resin comes in several lifelike shades that can be closely matched to your existing enamel. The lack of metals also means that there isn’t any extreme, temperature-related sensitivity to worry about. With regular oral hygiene and checkups, your new filling should last for 15 years or even longer.
Dentures & Partial Dentures
Dentures have been around for hundreds of years now, and today’s modern versions are still an affordable and fast way to recreate teeth. At Sage Family Dentistry, Dr. Sage will design the ideal prosthetic for your face and mouth, ensuring that it functions as well as it looks. Traditional full and partial dentures can be removed whenever the patient desires it, while implant-retained dentures can be permanently fixed in place so that they’re indistinguishable from natural teeth.
Root Canals
If you’re suffering from severe sensitivity or outright pain in a specific tooth, an advanced infection could be taking place within it. In order to avoid extraction, Dr. Sage may recommend root canal therapy. During this procedure, our team will carefully access your tooth’s inner chamber and canals, eliminating diseased pulp from the area. After replacing it with a biocompatible substance and thoroughly sealing the tooth to prevent further infection, a custom-made dental crown will be fitted on top as a final touch.
Despite popular belief, root canals are not a scary or overly painful procedure. Today’s modern techniques have made this process very comfortable, and it has a very high success rate of over 90% as well. In fact, many treated teeth are able to stay a part of patients’ smiles for the rest of their lives.
Extractions
Removing natural teeth is never our team’s first choice when treating a patient, and we will do everything in our power to help your smile stay whole and healthy. Unfortunately, situations can arise where this becomes a necessity, such as:
- When a tooth has suffered a traumatic injury.
- When a tooth is too decayed to be treated with other restorative procedures.
- When a patient is suffering from advanced gum disease.
- When a “baby” tooth is being stubborn and needs to come out of the mouth to make room for the emerging adult tooth.
- When a patient is in need of orthodontic treatment and one or more teeth have to be removed to make room.
At Sage Family Dentistry, our team can provide sedation dentistry and other comforting amenities in order to make the extraction process stress-free. We’ll also help you formulate a plan for replacing the tooth right away if needed.
Wisdom Tooth Extractions
One of the most common reasons for tooth extraction not listed above is the presence of wisdom teeth. Also known as third molars, these adult teeth are the last ones to push their way up into your smile, typically making an appearance between the ages of 16 and 22. Unfortunately, most mouths don’t have enough space to safely accommodate them. As a result, wisdom teeth can become impacted (trapped in the jawbone) or dangerously overcrowded.
Dr. Sage will closely monitor the development of these teeth in teenage patients, and extraction will be recommended if we determine that it’s the best option available. We want to do whatever is best for your ongoing oral health and wellbeing.