Healthy Smiles Family Dental

If you’re an adult and you discover a loose tooth, make an appointment with Drs. Na Xu and Mark Thomas immediately. They can save you a visit from the Tooth Fairy with a simple procedure called Periodontal Splinting. Your Salem, OR, dentist attaches your weaker teeth to your stronger ones. This creates stability and evens them out. A visit to Healthy Smiles Family Dental can determine whether this looseness is caused by periodontal disease, misalignment, or injury.   Having a tooth extracted is an unpleasant situation for any patient. It is avoided with periodontal splinting. It saves you time and money, without any sort of recovery process. Temporary and permanent splinting are the available types. The cause of the looseness plays a part in which works best for you. For facial injuries or short-term solutions, invest in a temporary splint. These are available in intra-coronal and extra-coronal. They differ in how they attach to the teeth. An intra-coronal splint requires a channel on ...

Baby teeth, by nature, aren’t as strong as their adult teeth counterparts. This means they’re much more susceptible to dental decay. Hence why children often get more cavities than adults. This doesn’t mean that parents shouldn’t take care of their children's baby teeth. Learning good dental habits now will follow them into adulthood. So when your infant experiences a phenomenon called Baby Bottle Tooth Decay, schedule an appointment with Drs. Na Xu and Mark Thomas right away. Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem, OR, offers pediatric dentistry services.   Like all cavities, they are formed by an accumulation of bacteria within the mouth. Sugary substances left on the teeth attract hordes of bacteria. This right here is the biggest cause of baby bottle tooth decay. The culprit is found right in your child's bottle. The American Dental Association recommends parents only fill bottles with breast milk, milk, or formula. Avoid giving beverages that are high in sugar. This include...

No one enjoys getting a tooth removed. It is often painful and requires a longer recovery time. At Healthy Smiles Family Dental, Drs. Na Xu and Mark Thomas provide patients with a type of extraction known as Sectioning. The tooth is broken into multiple pieces and then removed. It’s easier for everyone! To learn more, contact our office in Salem, OR.   Sectioning is used in these three situations: wisdom teeth, pediatric extraction, and multi-faceted or unique teeth. Each one requires this procedure for similar yet different reasons; they all require the extra care that only your Salem, OR, dentists can provide. The most common sectioning procedure is wisdom teeth removal. Your wisdom teeth are the last set of molars to come in. They are naturally very large. This makes them difficult to remove. Breaking them up is the only way to get them out. Uniquely shaped or multi-rooted teeth are much sturdier than normal. They also can’t be removed without sectioning. Lastly, one of the biggest ...

Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem, OR, offers Bone Grafting consultations and procedures to our patients. Drs. Na Xu and Mark Thomas recommend bone grafting for patients interested in receiving dental implants. If your jawbone isn't strong enough to support the implants, a bone graft is necessary. It strengthens your jaw by replacing weakened areas with other tissue matter. To learn more, contact our office.   Teeth are meant to be in a complete set. Like a puzzle, when one piece is missing the whole thing falls apart. When a tooth is missing, the bone underneath deteriorates. Your Salem dentists will take an x-ray of your jaw. This provides insight into the weakened areas. Drs. Xu or Thomas acquire the bone material either from a tissue bank or another area of your mouth. The procedure is then scheduled.   At the procedure, general anesthesia is administered. Your Salem dentist cuts along the jawbone in the selected area. The bone graft is inserted and held in place using eith...

Do you always seem to have tartar and bleeding gums despite your best effort at brushing? It may be time for you to look into getting an electric toothbrush. Healthy Smiles Family Dental treats patients with all kinds of needs. We’re happy to guide our struggling patients toward hygiene products that might improve their oral health. The old model manual toothbrushes are highly effective at preventing tooth decay when they are used correctly. They need to be used twice a day for two minutes at a time, and the patient needs to pay enough attention to cover every tooth surface. Electric toothbrushes are particularly useful for people with physical disabilities or difficulty focusing. They make tens of thousands of brushstrokes per minute, contrasting with the dozens made by manual toothbrushes, and can be used more quickly and with fewer hand motions. Electric toothbrushes could create a risk of overbrushing, but many of them now come with smartphone apps to prevent that. A user would not...

Usually losing a baby tooth is an exciting developmental milestone. But what happens when one just never falls out? Healthy Smiles Family Dental is a trusted provider of tooth extractions to the Salem community. We can help when an adult still retains some of their baby, or deciduous, teeth. Normally, the roots of baby teeth dissolve as the adult tooth makes its way toward the gum line. This is why the deciduous tooth's crown pops out shortly before the adult tooth emerges. But sometimes, the teeth are extremely misaligned, and the adult tooth doesn’t come in at the right angle to push the baby tooth out. This tends to happen more often to the central lower incisors. There are also a few cases in which an adult tooth never develops or pushes through, which is likelier to happen to the upper lateral incisors and canines. Having both baby teeth and adult teeth often leads to overcrowding. The jumbled teeth are also difficult to keep clean. If the baby tooth root isn’t attached to the...

Do you feel a shooting pain in your teeth when you bite into a frozen treat? Don’t let that ruin your summer. We provide general dental care at Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem to keep our patient’s teeth comfortable as well as beautiful. If your teeth are overly sensitive, it could indicate a problem with their enamel. Enamel is the hardest substance in the human body, while the pulp inside each tooth contains blood and a nerve. Between the pulp and enamel is a substance called dentin. This substance is a yellow-gray color and can be seen when enamel is thin. It is made up of tiny tubes, making heat easily transferable through it. Without sufficient enamel, dentin is vulnerable to sudden changes in heat that will be felt in the pulp. It is common for teeth to be sensitive immediately after whitening. Enamel can also be broken down through mechanical damage. But in most cases, enamel erosion is due to acid from infectious bacteria or acid reflux. Drinks such as sodas and citrus ju...