Restorative Cycles - The Major Factor in Keeping Your Teeth For Life
The most common concern of patients I see is “… I’d like to keep my teeth for life”.
This is not only a reasonable desire – it is achievable for the majority of patients. However, the most critical element to delivering this kind of result to patients is how often their teeth are touched with the dental drill. The closer to zero, the better.
This sounds obvious, right? Who wants to have their teeth drilled? Of course not - closer to zero is better!
The reality of this comes down to the number of restorative cycles a patient experiences. I’ll give you an example… let’s say a patient gets their first “round” of fillings around 20 years of age. Let’s also say that this patient will live to be 80 years old.
If this person is going to keep their teeth for life (and I do expect some losses over a lifetime of 80 years) – I would expect the fillings that they had done are probably going to be replaced or re-modelled on 2 or 3 occasions, approximately 20 years apart with the addition of further fillings in the interim. This will take the patient to the age of 80 – with teeth.
To achieve such a result, the dentist would need to be incredibly conservative of tooth structure from the very beginning of treatment – only taking the minimum amount of tooth structure with each new restoration and each new restorative cycle… possibly only conducting repairs on fillings when required instead of a complete restorative cycle… this is how you save tooth structure and provide patients with the opportunity to keep their teeth for life.
Not only does this methodology minimise the number of touches of teeth, in combination with targeted education around diet and home care, it also minimises the cost of dental care over a lifetime.
Sure, we still see patients once or twice a year – this kind of caring oversight ensures problems don’t get out of hand and teeth are always shiny and clean…
This is the essence of Belledental… Keeping Your Teeth for Life.
intouch contributor DR ALEX HUSZTI BelleDental
Alex has had a career focused on low-biologic cost reconstructive cosmetic dental care –
common sense teeth for life.
