When it comes to maintaining and beautifying your smile, you want to be sure that you have access to the best technology available in dentistry. Why? These advanced tools and methods can make your time in the chair that much shorter and more pleasant. At Moses Lake Family Dentistry, we take advantage of the tools mentioned below — read on to learn more about them and how they can enhance your radiant smile.
If your upper and lower teeth don’t fit together properly, it can cause tension in the muscles and joint that hold your lower jaw in place. You can suffer from disorders in this joint, called the temporomandibular joint or TMJ. These TMJ disorders can prevent you from chewing or opening your mouth without causing pain. Dr. Harder can help alleviate your TMJ symptoms for long-term relief and improved function using an occlusal splint. This appliance helps to make sure your teeth are aligned in their optimal positions.
Do you suffer from loud, chronic snoring and struggle with daytime fatigue? You may have a serious condition called sleep apnea, which consists of lapses in breathing during sleep. This problem is more than just an annoying habit—it can have consequences on your long-term health. After you complete a sleep study to confirm your diagnosis, Dr. Harder can treat your sleep apnea with a custom-made oral appliance that keeps your lower jaw positioned forward, preventing your facial tissues from cutting off your air supply. This treatment is much less invasive than using a CPAP machine, which some find even more disruptive to their sleep than the sleep apnea itself.
Our professional team members realize that dental anxiety is a very real feeling, and we don’t want that to hold anyone back from getting the care their smile needs. We offer nitrous oxide, which is a fast-acting sedative, to calm nervous patients. With this method, you will still be fully conscious but feel at ease during the procedure. Then, when we’re done, the effects of the nitrous oxide will subside quickly, allowing you to get back to your day without any effects.
In the past, when the dentist found something wrong in your mouth, unless you were experiencing severe pain, you simply had to accept their word and trust that they know best. Today, Dr. Harder wants to be your partner in your oral health. We can use a Digital SLR intraoral camera to show you exactly what he sees so that you can make a more informed decision and feel confident about your dental care.
These days, everything is going digital, and our X-rays are no different. In addition to providing results immediately for Dr. Harder’s close inspection, digital X-rays are more precise for more accurate diagnosis. Plus, they involve 90 percent less exposure to radiation, and the sensors are smaller than those for traditional X-rays. Overall, this technology allows us to catch problems early on—before they have a chance to cause more significant problems later on.
Have you ever had to have dental impressions taken before? The gooey, messy putty used in traditional impressions was unconformable, making going to the dentist feel like an unpleasant chore. However, Dr. Harder and our team at Moses Lake Family Dentistry use Medit i500, an advanced digital impression system, to obtain crucial information for restorations and appliances all while keeping you completely comfortable. Plus, this digital system tends to be more accurate, ensuring a better fit the first time, because there is less room for the human error that can occur with traditional impressions.
Sometimes, your teeth aren’t the problem. Your gums and other soft tissues in your mouth can cause issues that need to be addressed gently. Our Waterlase soft tissue laser can be used to perform many different procedures on the soft tissues in your mouth, including gum disease therapy, gum recontouring, frenectomies, and more. The best parts are that this tool eliminates the need for stitches or sutures, helping you heal quickly, and that it causes little to no pain at all.
When planning your treatment, we can benefit from having an accurate model of your teeth right here in our office. It can also help you visualize how treatments will work. Using the data collected by our digital impression system, we can create a personalized treatment plan that will meet your needs. Our 3D printer enables us to get this model sooner and helps Dr. Harder in preparing these restorations and appliances with more accuracy for faster, better results.
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