Cosmetic Dentistry Saved The Day
As the 1980s entered, the dental industry in the United States felt the trouble approaching brought about by its own success in helping decrease tooth decay by 50 percent in two decades. While general dentistry lost its shimmer, cosmetic dentistry was slowly flourishing. Lately, more than 80 percent of the country's pool of 130,000 dentists is embarking on cosmetic work and a lot are saying that it is the fastest rising branch of their practice.
It can be estimated that almost half of the $32 billion annual revenues of dentistry comes from the practice's cosmetic branch, says a book author and professor at a medical college in Georgia. Demands for cosmetic work among dentists have tripled nowadays compared to five years ago, says the AACD president. This became possible because of the great materials available now. It is recommended that you visit this site for resources on cosmetic dental surgery.
The porcelain laminates are the most notable among them and these are fine porcelain veneers that would be allowed to cover the existing teeth and would be bonded into place. To prevent scratching its surface, patients must not bite their nails or chomp on spareribs. But most dentists say that with minimal care, the laminates are durable and virtually undetectable. The use of porcelain laminates is generating up to $250,000 a year in revenues for dentists who average 10 treatments a month.
Another cosmetic dental treatment that is becoming a household name in America today is bleaching, which is a synthesized whitening treatment for the teeth that will cost you 100 to 200 dollars per treatment. Public figures like entertainers and politicians are a big part of the ones who are getting this work done. This is not limited to the public individuals but also for the private people, particularly men who have shown up in cosmetic dentist clinics. Almost half of the cosmetic patients are male and this is quite a big leap from the 20 percent just a few years ago.
Porcelain has been part of dentists' materials for a long time, but the refining of the technique of bonding it to existing teeth is just recently done. The sales for porcelain laminates for this year alone will reach 300,000 amounting to $20 million for the American manufacturers. For now, porcelain is the material of choice, but dental cosmeticians continually hunts and bakes for the better bond. A particular dentist uses small portions of ceramic in a gum base to come up with caps and bridges. The desired form will just be molded in the mouth and the caps are baked in an oven for seven minutes. The result is caps that are at least twice as strong as porcelain laminates at about half the price. If you are looking for more information on dentists in sydney make sure to visit their website.
A specialty designed oven that costs 1000 dollars will enable dentists to do baked bonding on site. As one of the dentists is baking, another New York dentist has designed a patented silk bonding technique that he claims to lift up bonding strength three times. This, however, exceeds the price of regular bonding by 25 percent. An official of the American Dental Association agreed that the baking method can really strengthen mixtures but the improvement is not as noticeable.
Another new process is eliminating the need for bonding in certain cases. At present, they are just putting hydrogen peroxide to whiten them. Although dentists have not yet seen any detrimental effects of bleaching, the discoloration reappears over time. A problem of cosmetic dentists is the difficulty of conveying to patients the results to expect after a cosmetic alteration that they frequently go back.
A university professor in Southern California constructed a computer system in his office that will give his patients a visual understanding of how they will most probably look like after the dental cosmetic procedure. The contents of the system are a video camera, an electronic pen and electronic writing pad, a computer and a color monitor. A camera is used to take an image of the patient's smile which is then displayed on the screen. The expected cosmetic enhancement can now be projected onscreen for better appreciation of the changes that whitening, gap closing and edge smoothing can give.
People who are seeing their smile in a close up for the first time are normally surprised. They will just eventually be amazed at how much change a mild alteration can do to their appearance.
