Hi, I’m Dr. Jason Mounts. You know, I think a lot of people have questions that they always wanted to know, like “What do the Northern Lights look like?” or “What would it be like to swim with sharks?” or “What’s my dentist really thinking when he’s looking at my teeth?” Well okay, that probably doesn’t rank up there with the rest of them, but I’d like to share a little bit of information with you today. About what I’m doing when I’m checking out people’s teeth and what kind of tools that we use and what we’re looking for when we’re looking at people’s teeth.
So, obviously, the first thing is just using your eyes and being able to see when there’s a cavity there. That’s probably the easiest thing to do but cavities aren’t always right there on the surface. So, that’s not foolproof. The other thing is, we have X-rays and X-rays are great to help us find cavities and places that are really hard to see. We also use feel, that’s why we hold the instruments to kind of feel around on your teeth to make sure that everything’s solid.
When it’s not we know there’s a problem but there’s also another tool, that you’re probably not terribly familiar with. That is extremely helpful to find cavities early on. It’s called a Diagondent. A Diagondent is actually just a laser cavity detection. It has a little laser on here that helps show the reflection of the tooth and tell us if there is a cavity underneath the surface. Now, you might say “Well, why do I need all these different ways to define cavities?” Well, what we found is that the earlier you can catch cavities, the better off the tooth is. The better off the patient is as well.
For the lifespan of the tooth, doing a small filling is way better than waiting until the cavity gets bigger. To do a much bigger filling it also saves time for you and it also saves money as well because a smaller filling is a whole lot less expensive to fix than a big one. So, you can see we’ve got a lot of different tools that we use to help make sure that we keep your teeth in the best shape, that they can be. To find things as early as possible to make it the least amount of stress and the least amount of work on us. So, really we’ve got all the tools and we’re just waiting on you so if it’s been a while since you’ve had your teeth checked. You’re needing to come in. Give us a call! We’d love to visit with you check things out, make sure your teeth are doing fine. Give us a call at 501-753-0166