Dental Terms Explained By Your Streatham Dentists
Explanations of some dental terminology you may have come across, but not understood.
Whether it is during dental surgery, a check up or reading about it online, patients will inevitably come across words that they don’t understand related to dentistry.
Whilst dentists may use these every working day, for a patient they can be somewhat confusing and, in some cases, may cause some anxiety for something that sounds more serious than it is.
In today’s, and in future blogs, we will take a look at a few of these terms to enable our patients understand a little more about what we mean.
Minimally invasive dentistry
Let’s start with a relatively straightforward one. As you can probably guess, this means that our dentists will endeavour to keep as much of the natural tooth as possible when performing a procedure, something our dentist Samantha Pring is very keen to do. A good example of this is when a filling is needed. Amalgam is the most common filling material used but it does sometimes require more of the tooth to be removed than some other methods as the tooth has to be shaped to hold the filling in place. This is why we prefer to use white dental fillings where we can. These often require less of the tooth to be removed as the material bonds well with the enamel.
Bruxism
This is simply a medical term for teeth grinding. It is thought that this is usually related to stress and can have a major impact on the teeth. From worn enamel that may lead to tooth sensitivity, to broken and shattered teeth, it can be very harmful indeed. Whilst we will do all that we can to help whilst a patient is suffering from this, our real benefit comes once the issue is resolved and we can then look at restoring the teeth with treatments such as a dental crown.