HBUK » dental

Cats v Dogs

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:12:58 +0000

With the exception of a few, we are mostly a nation of animal lovers and the majority of us would rather drink a bottle of mouthwash than have anything happen to our beloved pet. The cat v dog debate has raged for years and always will, and there are good arguments on both sides.

I would never hurt a dog but I’m a cat person through and through. Now all you dog lovers will be up in arms about how loyal and devoted your pooches are and that’s fair enough, but with the exception of a few breeds they are also basically stupid. Okay, you can train them to sit and give a paw and get them to walk on a lead, go you. A cat doesn’t need to be trained as everything is instinctive. My little moggy doesn’t give me a paw when she’s hungry, she cries and lets me know, that’s all I need. On the loyalty front, I see cats as being like human beings. You can be absolutely rotten to a dog and they will still adore you, treat a cat badly and they will leave and find another home. That’s not disloyalty, that’s common sense!

You aren’t frightened to take your eyes off a kitten either like you are a puppy, and you don’t have to make sure all shoes, backs etc are out of the way so they don’t demolish them with their teeth. If a kitten gets upstairs the worst they can do is get under a bed, whereas a puppy will leave a veritable trail of destruction. Anyone who has found their toothbrush in bits and their puppy covered in toothpaste will know where I’m coming from.

Cosmetic Surgery– Dental Surgery to Enhance the Appearance of your Teeth

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:42:55 +0000

If you are to improve your teeth appearance then cosmetic dental surgery is the modern day technique to be used. It is an excellent combination of science as well as art. With so much development in the field of cosmetic surgery done, it is possible for you to enhance your smile and improve your appearance. Cost wise cosmetic surgery even in cosmetic dentistry is not a cheap affair. The procedures used may cost you about $1000 for every tooth. Also the procedure is required to be done every 10 to 15 years since the materials used in procedure have this much life. The options provided in cosmetic dental treatment are as follows.

One major problem with teeth is its crooked shape. The reshaping of teeth called contouring is possible in cosmetic dentistry. The technique contouring is also used to correct cracked teeth, overlapping teeth and chipped teeth. Normally dental contouring or reshaping is used to change shape, length or location of teeth.

Enamel shaping is the option in cosmetic surgery dentistry to enhance the appearance of your tooth. This technique is also known as odontoplasty, enameloplasty, reshaping, recontouring and stripping. If you are miss one or more tooth, then you have to undergo dental bridges or false teeth. The area left due to missing tooth is filled with false tooth having two porcelain crowns used to hold your false tooth fixed. This is termed as fixed bridge. These false teeth or fixed bridges cannot be taken out of the mouth as in the case of removable partial dentures.

If there is problem with the front teeth, cantilever bridges are used. Since that is the area of less stress and teeth are only on one side, cantilever bridge will serve the purpose. Bridges have functions such as reducing gum disease, correcting bite issues and improving speech problem. The oral hygiene should be of top priority when you want long lasting solutions with bridges. When your teeth have gaps or when your teeth are not responding well to whitening procedures you have an option of using Veneers. They are ultra thin laminates made as per your needs to bond the teeth directly.

The option for making your teeth more symmetrical for long time is to have gum lift. The gum line is raised as well as sculpted in this dental procedure. The reshaping of the tissue and underlying bones is done in this procedure. Previously the material used for tooth filling was amalgam, gold and other metals with some of the procedures done with porcelain. But now tooth filling is done entirely with porcelain or composite materials which are very close to the natural tooth in appearance. Resin adhesives are used to bond these materials with underlying tooth structure. These materials used are entirely free from mercury. The cosmetic dentistry is used to have natural looking teeth to enhance overall appearance of your teeth.

Although all of this dental procedures could be considered as minor cosmetic surgical procedures they are no less a procedure that does enhance the overall appearance.

Anesthesia and its Role in Dentistry

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:33:06 +0000

It is known that in most of the cases which imply a major intervention upon some parts of the body, anesthesia comes as the first measure of protection from the disturbing pain. Of course, there are some interventions which cannot be performed without a proper anesthesia but in the same way, there are a lot of interventions which do not request anesthesia or different methods of anesthetics.
A painful truth in cosmetic dentistry today is that for most dental procedures, local anesthesia is truly effective only when injected. The insertion of the needle and the injection of the anesthetic fluid itself can cause discomfort, and for decades dentists have been using topical anesthesia to reduce this. They have also tried to use finer-gauge needles in the belief that they cause less pain. As topical anesthesia can be useful for minimizing the pain associated with needle insertion, it has not been proven to address the pain of the actual injection of the solution.
A recent study in Anesthesia Progress examined the effectiveness of topical anesthesia in reducing pain associated with needle insertion separately from the pain associated with injection of the anesthetic. Results were investigated after different intervals (2, 5, and 10 minutes) to determine the time for optimal efficacy of the topical anesthetic. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, responses from 85 people showed that the topical anesthetic was statistically and significantly more effective compared to the placebo for reducing the pain caused by needle insertion alone at all time points. Yet it had no effect on perceived pain intensity associated with injection of the local anesthetic solution at any of the time intervals. At all time lengths, patients reported the same degree of pain from anesthetic solution injections in topically anesthetize and placebo locations. Therefore, the minimum 2-minute periods appear to be sufficient for the topical anesthetic application, since a 5- or 10-minute delay has no added benefit in reducing the pain of needle insertion. The reported pain intensity levels were not associated with differences in the subjects’ age, gender, weight, or heart rate.

So it is that anesthesia can be considered in a lot of cases a myth. People know that the intervention will hurt and they want to take all the possible measures in order to prevent that even if they will really help them or not. As we explained above, in the major interventions, anesthesia has a significant role in assuring the person’s comfort. We all know that going to the dentists is something that no one enjoys and that is why everybody tries to take all the possible measures of protection. Still, is can be seen that anesthesia can function as well with the placebo effect, mostly in the cases that do not require strong anesthesia. This is due to the fact that by knowing that after the “anesthesia”, they cannot possibly feel any pain, most of the subjects do not feel any!