Case Study - Receding Gums and Silver Fillings, by Dana Rockey, Newport Beach Integrative Dentist

Описание: Case Study - Receding Gums and Silver Fillings by Newport Beach dentist, Dr. Dana Rockey, DMD.

Some dentists surprisingly still use dental amalgam, the material used to fill cavities for over 150 years today. Fillings made with amalgam, also are known as silver fillings, have been a subject of concern because amalgam contains mercury. Actually, amalgam is made from a combination of metals including silver, mercury, tin and copper. In some cases, there may even be small amounts of zinc, indium or palladium that are used in silver fillings...

Read the rest of the article, at http://www.danarockey.com/silverfilli...

Transcript:
Hi this is Dana Rockey and I wanted to share a case that came in to our office and had been going to a dentist for quite some time. They had too many questions regarding their teeth and they were looking for some answers (that they weren’t getting); and looking for some education as to what was going on. They were dissatisfied somewhere else (with another dentist). So they came to my office; and what we do, as you can see, is take x-ray pictures. Here in our office we take what I call, inter-oral camera pictures also. And so part of our job, or I should say, most of our job is to Most of our job in the office is education; and in this particular case, that is exactly what this patient was looking for, and to understand the concerns that they had. They were concerned about two things. They were concerned about the grooves along the gum lines here along the teeth. It took a while to educate the patient, in to showing them that what really was going on is that a toothbrush was actually cutting into the side of the tooth here. And so it takes a little while to explain to them why that happened, what recession of gum tissue and exposure of the root, and then of course the toothbrush doing the final cutting in to that. Here we like to fill those in with white filling material and make those blend in: a) to protect the nerve that’s in side of the tooth, b) aesthetically, make that look different, and c) hopefully getting some strengthening from the filling too, after we’ve fixed the cut in the tooth. So we can fix that; she had been wanting to know about that, and really, what drove her in to the office was this dark tooth that her previous dentist didn’t want to work on, or didn’t seem to indicate was an issue. So we took photographs, as you know, and x-rays and they had a large silver filling on the inside that had been there for many, many, many years, and the blue-gray color here as it turned out was cavity. So here we have a very old filling that’s in the tooth and we have a lot of leaking going on around the filling that’s in the tooth because the filling was no longer sealing and back bacteria was able to get underneath there; decay had started extensively under this cusp, and of course when she smiled she could actually see this tooth. In this particular case, with a large silver filling here and a great portion of this cusp on the outside being undermined with cavity and unfortunately had to be removed, and this cut along the gum line I recommended putting a crown on the tooth because that would be the solution to cover all the problems, strengthen the tooth, protect the nerve inside the tooth, and satisfy her requirement, that no longer when she smiled she’d have a dark tooth to look at. So in this particular case finances was not an issue, it was simply a lack of education, she didn’t understand what was going on with her teeth and wanted answers and apparently we satisfied that here in our office. Using the tools that we have now with digital radiographs and digital inter-oral photos its just the best thing that we are able to educate our patients, show them what’s really going on, and help them make the decision as to what’s best for the tooth. Thanks again for watching.

To learn more about Dr. Dana Rockey's wellness approach to dental care, his oral-systemic discipline and his focus on healthy nutrition, visit www.DanaRockey.com.