When you are suffering from an infected tooth, it is critical that you seek effective treatment in a timely manner, so that your dental problems do not become more severe. Our Santa Monica dentist provides the dental care that you need to reclaim a healthy smile. Today we’ll be talking about which treatments are used to address varying degrees of dental damage.
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If you are dealing with a fairly small cavity—one that is small in diameter, and is only in your dental enamel and/or dentin, then the cavity removal process should be pretty simple. In these cases, our dental team eliminates the infected dental material, cleans the tooth, and then uses a filling to restore the tooth. In order to complete your filling, our team will place dental resin in the appropriate spots in your tooth. Then, we’ll cure the resin so that it hardens and bonds to your natural tooth.
Sometimes, when a dental infection has compromised more of the patient’s tooth, our team uses a dental crown to the restore the tooth post-cavity-extraction. Individual dental restorations allow our team to rebuild missing dental structure quickly, completely, and with natural-looking results.
It is also possible that your tooth becomes severely damaged, and that the cavity on your enamel extends into the inner core of your tooth. In cases like these, the tooth’s dental pulp, nerves, and roots are compromised and need to be removed. Our dental team performs root canal therapy to go into the tooth, clear away all of the infected material, and consequently save the remaining healthy dental structure. Once root canal therapy is complete, our team will restore the tooth with gutta percha, and a filling and/or dental restoration.
As always, our Santa Monica dentist is here to help you no matter what the current state of your smile. Contact our dental team when you are ready to get started!