White Flint Family Dental is a Rockville based family dentist practice that treats patients of all ages. We are committed to delivering the highest quality dental care and do so using advanced dental equipment. We are a cosmetic dentist that offers services like checkups, teeth cleaning, crowns, veneers and more.
My treatment philosophy is that of seeing the person as a whole. Many times treatments focus on appearance and esthetics alone. Making things look better but never once taking into account functional or health problems. Many times headaches and migraines can simply be caused by nighttime grinding and or teeth clenching. Why just prescribe migraine medication? Why not just treat the cause? These same headaches and migraines can also be caused by nutritional and or chronic infections or allergies. There are a multitude of possibilities.
I also believe children should be evaluated as early as 6 years old for orthodontic intervention. If a child has mismatched upper and lower jaw sizes, why wait until they are teens to start straightening teeth? ADD and nighttime bedwetting can be a result of poor orthodontic conditions, which cause poor airway conditions. Again why leave an obvious jaw size discrepancy and just straighten teeth? Treat the cause. Functional orthodontics involves the use of appliances to match jaw sizes while a child is still growing.
Furthermore, the use of functional orthodontics in adults usually involves treatment of headaches of TMJ. These untreated children tend to become adults with sleep disorders. Whether it is poor sleep quality or medically diagnosed sleep apnea, these adults continue on their journey of preventable health issues such as headaches, migraines, TMJ, hypertension, and chronic fatigue.
My diagnosis considers the person as a whole for life. This is a far-reaching goal, which can only be accomplished in conjunction with other heath care practitioners. We work with many physicians and therapists to help you obtain your best. Health care is life long journey of knowledge for both the patient and practitioner.
Recall checkups in most situations every 6 months is the initial step to maintaining a healthy dentition. As we see children every 6 months starting at the age of 4 years old dentitional transitions can be monitored closely. Evaluation of tonsils and adenoids and planning for a healthy occlusion for each unique individual is crucial for a childs future dental health as well as physical. Early education is important to guide the children in understanding the importance of a healthy dentition and retaining good oral habits.
As we are a family practice, dental needs for each member is stressed for their individualized stage. Treatment is planned in an ideal but realistic approach. Treatment planning whether involving periodontal care, restorative work or as simple as patient education, all tie into the focus of early diagnosis and prevention.
As a kid friendly dentist in Rockville we treat young children, including preschooler and elementary age children, for their first checkup. We realize that a lot of parents do not bring their child to the dentist until they are much older. This, however, is a mistake. Your child can develop cavities as young as their toddler years and visiting our kid friendly dentist office is one way to help prevent them.
As a parent, you naturally want what is best for your child. Many parents are unaware of how oral health and dental care plays into that. According to the Center for Disease Control, tooth decay (cavities) is the number one most commonly occurring infectious disease among children. This leads to children experiencing toothaches in high numbers, missing days from school, and experiencing overall discomfort. Tooth decay is not a trivial thing, but a condition that can create significant discomfort for your child and even make it difficult for them to eat, speak clearly, and engage in normal daily activities. If you live in the Rockville area and think that this will not happen to your child, statistically, it most likely will. Brushing and flossing at home will help, but it is not enough. You need to bring your child to our kid friendly dentist office twice a year so that we can examine and clean their teeth. By doing this, we will be able to remove the plaque and bacteria that can lead to cavities in the first place.
In addition to visiting our kid friendly dentist office, it is important that you practice good oral hygiene at home and teach your child to do the same. In our dental office, we work with a lot of children under age eight and understand how challenging it can be to get them excited about brushing teeth. Kids are busy and asking them to stop riding bikes, building Legos, or playing dress up to brush their teeth can lead to conflict fairly quickly. We get it. At White Flint Family Dental, we can work with young children and are under no illusion that they are fascinated by oral health. Our job, however, is to change their opinion of dental care and show them that it can be fun and interesting. This way they will want to brush and floss their teeth, even without being told. With that in mind, we have a few resources that we have found to be helpful and suggest that you try them at home.
Once your child is brushing correctly, it is time to turn your attention to how long they are brushing for. At White Flint Family Dental we encourage all of our patients to brush for two minutes, twice a day, regardless of how old they are. This, however, can be difficult for young children that find it hard to focus on a task or to stay still. As a kid friendly dentist, we want them to brush their teeth but staying still isn't a requirement. Try making it fun to brush teeth by playing their favorite song for two minutes and letting them dance and brush. You can also play a two-minute video clip or cartoon for them while brushing. The American Dental Association has an entire section of their website devoted to these short videos and watching them will get your child used to brushing for the full two minutes. We have worked with families throughout the Rockville area and have found that using media works far better than standing there with a stopwatch. The goal is to create positive associations between dental care and having fun so that your child will continue to brush their teeth as they grow.
As a kid friendly dentist office in Rockville, we are focused on preventative care. It is far better for your child to visit us for a regular teeth cleaning than to only see us with a toothache. Fortunately, by using preventative care methods we can help your child to avoid experiencing any dental discomfort. In addition to cleaning their teeth, one of the ways that we do so is with dental sealant. Many children have deep ridges in their teeth. When they bite down and chew food, bacteria, food particles, and plaque can become trapped in those ridges and eventually they will create tooth decay. These areas are particularly difficult to clean with a toothbrush alone, so even the most fastidious of parents may find it challenging to keep cavities at bay. By using dental sealant, a protective layer is placed onto the teeth so that nothing can become stuck in these ridges. The procedure is painless and fast since all we need to do is brush a material onto the teeth and allow it to harden. At White Flint Family Dental, we have found this to be a simple way to prevent our young patients from getting cavities.
Another tool for prevention is our regular fluoride treatments. We recommend that all children have this throughout their teenage years. If you aren't on public water, this is particularly important for preventing cavities. Statistically, if your child has a fluoride treatment in our dental office, their risk for getting cavities decreases by thirty percent. This is significant when you are considering the overall health and well-being of your child. With that in mind, we use whatever tools are at our disposal to ensure that your child is as healthy and as comfortable as possible both now and as they age. If you live in the Rockville area, we invite you to schedule a dental exam by calling (301) 273-1085.
A kid-friendly dentist specializes in dental care for children, although they may offer services for adults of all ages as well. Learning more about the role a kid-friendly dentist plays and the benefits they can provide both children and parents is helpful when determining the oral care needs for your child.Some of the more frequently
A negative experience at the dentist will cause children patients to avoid the dentist as much as possible. Just as a positive experience can instill a willingness to seek professional dental care and keep dental hygiene routines a regular habit at home. We will not only provide a positive experience for the child patient but
Pediatric dentistry sometimes uses treatments like root canals to treat primary teeth. Root canals are used to treat tooth infections and to save severely damaged teeth. Performing a root canal allows the dentist to treat the tooth without having to perform an extraction.Primary teeth serve as placeholders for permanent teeth, and orthodontic issues like impacted
Should children be seeing a family dentist or a pediatric dentist? While many adults and teenagers see a general or family dentist for all dental concerns, is that the best choice for children? This decision is a dilemma that many parents face as young children begin to develop baby teeth. While for some parents the
There is a direct link between visiting the dentist and keeping your natural teeth. If you want to ensure that you have a full mouth of healthy teeth, then visit the dentist. Gallup Poll released a study in 2014 finding that the states with the highest percentage of dental visits also had the lowest percentage of adult tooth loss. For example, in Connecticut, 74 percent of adults visited the dentist in the past year, and their rate of adult tooth loss was only 9 percent. On the other hand, only 57 percent of adults in West Virginia visited the dentist in the past year, and 37 percent of adults have complete tooth loss. The correlation is clear and should prompt you to give us a call. If you do lose your teeth, we can help by providing you with replacements in the form of dental implants, bridges, or dentures. Still, there is no need for you to experience significant tooth loss when you visit our office regularly for preventative care. Saving your teeth, after all, is less time-consuming and less expensive.
Another reason to schedule a dental check-up is to make sure that you don't experience a toothache or infection. We treat patients throughout the Rockville area and find that toothaches can create enough discomfort to cause people to miss work. In fact, according to the Center for Disease Control, 164 million work hours are lost each and every year due to dental related health issues. If you have a busy schedule and feel you do not have time for the dentist, you definitely need to schedule a dental checkup. Failing to do so could result in a more serious health condition forming and the need to take time off of work. After all, without preventative dental care, you are at a greater risk for tooth decay, infection, and gum disease.
At White Flint Family Dental, we are a gentle dentist, being sure to complete your dental checkup in a way that is comfortable and relaxing. We understand that some people do not visit the dentist since they have a dental phobia or concern that something may be wrong. If this is the case, and you do have a cavity, we will treat your tooth gently and carefully so that we can address your dental health issues without causing you any further irritation.
We invite you to call 301-273-1085 and schedule your dental checkup right away. When you come in, our friendly staff will make sure everything is ready to go. Next, we will take images of your teeth and gums to see if there are any infections or decay that are under the surface. We will also perform a visual inspection of your gums and each one of your teeth. During this time, we will also be looking for signs of infection, tooth decay, gum disease, and oral cancer. If we identify any of these issues, we will discuss treatment options with you and may even be able to treat minor cavities that day. Before starting any procedures we will discuss them in detail to ensure that you are comfortable. We will also clean your teeth before you go to ensure that you do not have any lingering plaque or bacteria in your mouth. When you visit our Rockville, MD dental office, we will provide you the highest quality of care we can, by completing your dental checkup efficiently and gently.
While we understand that many people wait to seek dental care due to anxiety, time, or finances, we do not recommend it. Instead, we suggest that you schedule a dental exam at least once every six months, even if you are not experiencing any discomfort. Doing so will allow us to remove any plaque or bacteria that is on your teeth, ensure that you do not have any cavities that are forming, and prevent you from experiencing gum disease. Our goal is to treat you before you have any health issues, and a dental checkup allows us to do so. We welcome you to come in so that we can protect and improve your oral health.
A dental exam can be a learning experience. Routine dental checks give you a chance to tap into the knowledge that dentists accumulate during their careers. One subject that everyone should discuss with a dentist or dental hygienist is oral habits. Good oral habits are effective and inexpensive. They keep the mouth healthy and prevent
A holistic dentist can provide you with an alternative to traditional dental care. This professional is a complementary way of providing oral care. The holistic approach has been gaining popularity in recent years. If you are wondering how a holistic dentist can help enhance your health, here are the details.Many patients turn to holistic means
We will start by examining your teeth and learning more about what goals you have for your smile. Options will then be presented, and you can decide the route you want to take. Most of the time, patients in the local area will use a combination of procedures in order to achieve the results they have in mind.
Yellow and stained teeth are a sign of age since teeth are whiter the younger you are. By eating foods that are artificially colored, drinking coffee, tea, wine and smoking teeth can become yellow and severely stained. This will negatively impact your appearance and can even make you look unhealthy. As a result, patients throughout Rockville have their teeth whitened to remove the stains.
When completing a smile makeover, some patients use dental veneers to make their teeth appear larger. Some adults, for example, have teeth that appear too small for their smile and their frame. When this is the case, veneers can be used to elongate the teeth and make them appear more natural. Patients throughout the local area enjoy the results that they receive by using veneers.
When teeth are more severely damaged or broken, a dental crown is often a better solution for transforming its appearance and functionality. A crown can be made in an all-ceramic or all-porcelain material that surrounds the tooth entirely. This improves the appearance of the tooth and strengthens it since when a crown is used, nothing touches the natural tooth. In the past, people may have had dental crowns that were made out of metal. These are functional but are unattractive and make it difficult, if not impossible, for a smile to look natural and healthy. Replacing metal crowns with ceramic ones makes it possible to have the restoration that you need without anyone knowing your tooth had ever been damaged. We can treat patients who want their smile makeover to include getting rid of outdated metal crowns.
Dental crowns can accomplish similar goals to veneers. They can make teeth even, close gaps, cover stains, and restore cracked or chipped teeth. The major difference is that the crown surrounds the entire tooth, so there is additional stability that comes with this procedure.
Our patients trust our team at White Flint Family Dental to replace their missing teeth in a way that looks completely natural. Dental implants are an excellent way to restore missing teeth because once the procedure is completed; you can enjoy all of your favorite activities and foods without worrying about the tooth falling out or becoming loose. This is important because, with other procedures like dentures, teeth can get loose while running around or eating lunch with friends. Dental implants are so durable that you will not be able to tell the difference between the implant and natural teeth.
In this procedure, a metal post is implanted under the gums and secured to the jawbone. Over several months, the bone and metal will fuse together in order to create a synthetic root system that is just as strong as a natural root system. Once healed, a new tooth is secured to the metal post for a natural and beautiful looking smile. This procedure is commonly used in smile makeovers because it allows us to replace any teeth that are missing.
Some people may also use dental implants to straighten teeth that are crooked or teeth that are not responding to orthodontics. This is an important part of a smile makeover because if all of your teeth are white and beautiful, but one is severely crooked, your new smile will feel incomplete.
Many adults think about getting a smile makeover to improve their appearance and oral health. There are various methods to accomplishing this, depending on the persons issue. If you are unhappy with your smile, your dentist can recommend a treatment that works for you. The results can give you more self-esteem. Before you begin the
A smile makeover can get you the smile that you have always wanted. The term refers to the combination of cosmetic treatments that are performed to enhance how a persons teeth look. Each patient gets a unique treatment plan that addresses all the issues affecting their teeth.Getting a smile makeover has more benefits than simply
Wondering whether a smile makeover includes fixing a cracked tooth? A dentist might decide to use dental crowns to repair cracked or broken teeth during your smile makeover. Smile makeovers are performed to significantly improve the way your teeth look. It often involves a combination of cosmetic dental treatments to tackle all the issues that
There is no shame in turning to a dentist for a smile makeover if you do not like the look of your teeth and/or gums. Your dentist knows exactly how to beautify your smile with one or several smile makeover treatments. Below, we provide a look at some smile makeover treatments to give you a