Keeping your teeth healthy and strong is important for your future dental health. Strong healthy teeth can save you trips to the dentist, dental mishaps, and costly repairs, and allow you to keep your natural teeth for a lifetime rather than have to invest your sweat, blood, and tears in dentures or implants. You know that a proper daily dental hygiene regimen helps prevent these issues, cavities, other dental diseases, and save your teeth. But a very important factor in your dental health equation is your twice yearly dental visits. Along with your oral hygiene, early intervention is key.
What is Early Intervention?
Early dental intervention is the early detection and treatment of dental issues such as cavities, and other dental problems, and dental diseases. General dentistry is all about prevention. However, preventive dentistry cannot always prevent everything. When that’s the case early intervention is key. Preventive dentistry includes establishing good oral health habits as a toddler and continuing them throughout your life. It includes your home health care, checkups, professional cleanings, x-rays, and possibly therapies. But, when a problem does develop, early intervention can include:
- Dental fillings
- Tooth extraction
- Root canals
- Crowns
- Dental bonding
Minimally Invasive Dental Treatment
The goal–or mission statement, if you will–of modern dentistry is minimal invasion. That means that dentists believe that a major goal of dentistry, besides preventing problems, is to retain as much natural tooth structure as possible when fixing problems. One of the reasons for this is because, if you need more treatment in the future on that same tooth, you will have more natural tooth to work with. The more natural tooth, the less likely you will lose your tooth and need more invasive and expensive treatment such as a dental implant. People are living longer these days, and more and more of them are retaining their natural teeth due to preventive dentistry and early intervention.
ABOUT YOUR KATY, TX DENTIST:
Dr. Colin Lathrop and the Lathrop Dental Center proudly serve patients and families from in and around Katy, Fulshear, Weston Lakes, Simonton, Richmond, Rosenberg, Brookshire, Wallis, Orchard, and all surrounding communities. If you’d like to schedule a dental appointment, you can reach our office in Katy, TX, by calling (832) 437-3849.
