General Dentistry

The American Dental Association recommends you see your dentist at least twice a year for a comprehensive dental exam. Maintaining your oral health is crucial in avoiding pain, tooth loss and expensive restorative dentistry procedures. Maranda A. Bliss DMD will provide a complete checkup to determine any potential problems such as tooth decay, cracks and gum disease. We will also happily replace older, worn-out dental work, such as metal fillings and discolored crowns.

With a comprehensive exam every six months, we can manage small dental problems before they grow into larger, more complicated issues. Untreated cavities can grow rapidly and destroy an entire tooth, a cracked tooth may break off if not discovered and corrected, and gum disease can advance if not detected early. Advanced gum disease can cause tooth loss and lead to serious health issues such as oral cancer, which causes more than 7,500 deaths each year. Catching these problems early is essential in controlling them.

A composite tooth filling, typically made of powdered glass and acrylic resin, offers a few advantages over an amalgam filling. For one, the filling can be shaded to match the color of a patient's existing teeth. As more people want natural-looking smiles, composite fillings have become increasingly popular.

This type of filling isn't always the right choice. The material it is made from is less durable than a mix of metals, such as in amalgam, according to Maranda A. Bliss, DMD. Therefore, the useful life of a composite filling isn't always as long as other options. It's perfect as a small filling, and best suited for teeth that experience a moderate amount of pressure when chewing, compared to teeth that handle the bulk of your chewing action.

Despite what you may have heard or read online, the goal of a root canal isn't to cause you immense pain. Instead, the goal of the procedure is to save a tooth that is severely infected. As the National Institutes of Health puts it, a dentist performs the procedure to remove bacteria and dying or dead tissue from inside the tooth.

Modern techniques and technology have helped root canals evolve into relatively comfortable treatments that often require no more than one or two trips to the dentist or endodontist.