Patients of all ages – including children – should receive dental checkups and cleanings at least twice per year. Keeping routinely scheduled appointments is crucial for detecting common oral health conditions and potential issues as soon as possible. As with the other systems of the body, early detection normally means that treatment will be more conservative, effective and budget-friendly. During oral examinations, our dentists will look for signs of disease that might affect the teeth, gums and jawbones. From screening patients for oral cancer to looking for potential gum disease or tooth decay, checkups are incredibly thorough.
Think of dental checkups and cleanings like the routine physicals you get for your body, only for your mouth. Oral health is linked to everything from your cardiovascular system to your mental health, so taking care of it is just as important as everything you do for your body. The American Dental Association (ADA) recommends everyone get two checkups and cleanings a year, about six months apart. Children can start visiting the dentist as early as a year or with the eruption of their first tooth; even if it isn’t to get a tooth cleaning, it still helps introduce young children to the experience of visiting the dentist, reducing fear and anxiety later on.
Fluoride Treatment
Tooth enamel is made of minerals, and when exposed to strong acid, its mineral content (and strength) can be stripped away. A naturally occurring mineral, fluoride is scientifically proven to strengthen teeth by attracting minerals to the surface of tooth enamel, which will ultimately help replenish lost mineral content. Strong, healthy tooth enamel is key in protecting teeth against cavity causing bacteria. Fluoride treatments are quick and easy and involve simply applying a fluoridated varnish or gel to the teeth.
Dental Sealants
Oklahoma ranks as one of the worst for dental care in both children and adults, with 21% of all adults over the age of 65 having lost all of their teeth due to insufficient dental care. Only 16% of children went to the dentist at all within the first two years, and less than 15% of kids up to age 14 had sealants applied to their molars. A simple dental procedure can play a big role in stopping cavities and decay in children and young adults.
A general dentist provides quality care for your most common dental care concerns, including dental check-up exams, cleaning, whitening, fillings, bridges, veneers, crowns, wisdom teeth removal, and root canals. General dentists can work with any patient of any age, and although a given practitioner’s area of expertise or specialty will be determined by their training, all general dentists can provide most primary dental care services.
Crowns
If a tooth falls out, only touch it by the crown (the part you see when you smile) and never by the roots.
Bridges
Dental Bonding
Restorative Dentistry
With comprehensive preventative and restorative dentistry from Dental Depot Oklahoma, everyone in your family can receive the quality, affordable services they need at multiple locations across the state, including OKC, Norman, and Tulsa, many with flexible hours and Saturday appointments.
Root canal therapy (also known as endodontic treatment) is a routine dental procedure that can help save a tooth with too much infection or decay to fix with a filling. It is most commonly used to treat abscessed teeth, which occurs when a bacterial infection from an untreated cavity, injury, or previous dental work has caused a pocket of pus (an abscess) to develop at the tooth’s root. A dental abscess will not go away on its own and can lead to tooth loss or other serious health complications if untreated.
Apicoectomy
If your root canal fails, you will need either endodontic treatment—simply another root canal—or an apicoectomy. An apicoectomy is like a reverse root canal—the infected tissue is accessed and removed from the bottom of the tooth root, and the tip of the root is sealed.
Dental deep cleaning, the common term for periodontal scaling and root planing, is used to treat periodontal disease (periodontitis), especially in the early stages. Unlike routine cleanings intended to prevent gum disease, deep cleaning treats gum disease by removing bacteria deposits from under diseased gum tissue. Treating the periodontal disease early is critical to preserving teeth and preventing major oral health problems like bone and tissue loss, moving or losing teeth, and swelling or infection.
With the iTero Element 2 scanner, dentists can take an accurate, detailed 3D scan of the entire mouth, mapping out each and every tooth and its placement within seconds to produce the digital impressions needed for dental devices. This allows them to take impressions for crowns, bridges, dentures, and more without using a molding compound that can restrict breathing, cause patients to gag, and be imprecise.
For more than 20 years, Dental Depot of Oklahoma has been at the forefront in adopting and integrating innovative treatment options and ground-breaking diagnostics to help deliver the best dental care possible to patients across the state. We’ve been among the first dental clinics in Oklahoma to use advanced technology like the iTero intraoral scanner and All-on-4 dental implants, and we remain committed to providing our patients with not just the latest and greatest solutions available but also the most effective ones that make sense for every individual person.
A general dentist can evaluate your unique situation and determine not only if you need oral surgery, but what kind and if it requires a specialist or oral surgeon. If the dentist will be performing your oral surgery, he or she will ensure you are comfortable with and during the procedure and will provide you with all the necessary follow up care and instructions. If your dentist determines that a specialist would be better suited to perform the surgery, they will provide you with a recommendation to ensure your dental care needs are taken care of.
Gum Surgery
Dental deep cleaning is also commonly called gum therapy because it is typically recommended for patients diagnosed with periodontal (gum) disease. It provides a non-surgical alternative to gum surgery to treat periodontitis, especially in the early stages. It reduces gum pocket depths without damaging the teeth or gums themselves and requires no removal of the gum tissue. The procedure is performed under local anesthesia, with most patients seeing results after a single treatment and experiencing only minimal—if any—pain or discomfort post-treatment.
Tooth Extractions
Although the primary goal of all dental care is to preserve natural teeth, there are times when a tooth–or multiple teeth–needs to be pulled due to decay, trauma, disease, or developmental concerns. Dental extractions are procedures a dentist, specialist, or oral surgeon performs to remove an entire tooth from its socket and surrounding tissue.
Bone Grafting
Are longer than traditional ones, which allows them to be anchored into the cheekbones (zygomas). This is important for patients who have bone loss or insufficient bone density in the upper jaw, conditions that may have precluded them from being able to get dental implants in the past. Often called “rescue implants,” zygomatic implants can be used in conjunction with traditional implants–which are placed toward the front of the jaw–and do not require bone grafting, so they can be placed immediately in patients who may not have been candidates for conventional implants alone.
Orthodontics is a branch of dentistry that focuses on occlusion irregularities and alignment concerns. If your bite isn’t lining up functionally or your teeth aren’t as straight as you’d like, an orthodontist or a dentist trained in orthodontic treatment can help.
Invisalign Orthodontics
Did you know that you can see what your new smile could look like before you even get started with Invisalign® treatment? It’s true!
Braces
There are many paths to a straight, healthy smile and braces have been an option for getting teeth on track for over a century. However, braces have come a long way in recent years. Gone are the clunky metal brackets and agonizingly slow treatment times, even traditional dental molds are a thing of the past. Today, braces are available to children, teens, and adults – each with their own unique options to fit your level of expression or lifestyle.
At Dental Depot, our general dentists offer services in preventive care as well as restorative and cosmetic dentistry. We also offer emergency dental care at many of our locations.