Dental Prevention at Every Age
As your smile develops from childhood, and as pre-disposition to dental issues or hygiene habits affects your oral health, it’s important to be mindful of what it takes to keep your smile as strong as possible. As a family dentist, Dr. Laura Bucci understands what patients of varying ages need to do to prevent significant problems from taking a toll on how their smiles function, look, and feel.
Children’s Preventive Dentistry
For our youngest patients, our preventive dental focus is on building hygiene habits, preventing dental caries, and creating positive associations with the dentist. Fostering the skills and know-how to thoroughly brush and floss teeth is an important tool to have in the fight against decay and gum disease. As patients get older, creating confidence in seeing the dentist helps children feel good about their routine check-ups, which are also key in spotting problems ahead of time. With education and preventive dental visits, your children can enjoy healthier baby and adult teeth, with minimized risk of damaging pediatric dental caries.
Caring for Adults’ Dental Needs
As patients grow into adulthood with healthy smiles, preventive dentistry helps maintain current dental health. For those who encountered issues with their smiles through the years, prevention can also include halting the progression of any existing issues, such as decay and infection, with more thorough teeth cleanings or even some prosthetic restorations. A well-fitting restoration can also prevent functional problems caused by decayed and damaged teeth or crowns and bridges that haven’t been customized to meet patients’ bite measurements.
Senior Dentistry
Many senior patients experience issues with gum disease and tooth loss, especially when taking certain medications or struggling with a lifetime of problematic restorations or damaged teeth. While the goal of prevention at earlier ages is to curb the severity of these issues, problems like broken teeth do happen by accident and other outside influences can create the right environment for soft tissue infection or tooth decay. In these cases, we help senior patients prevent gum disease by going over any medications and recommending care for problems like dry mouth, which can promote decay. Dr. Bucci can also help patients avoid damage to current prosthetic with nighttime mouth guards and avoid nutritional and functional challenges by providing durable teeth replacements.
Oakwood Dental offers families the education and care they need to enjoy healthy smiles at every age. For more information about preventive dentistry and general dental care for children, adults, and seniors, contact Dr. Bucci and her team.
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