Dentistry ranks in the top 10 most trusted and ethical professions in the United States today, and many millions of Americans have a dental care center that they visit once or twice per year for care. A dental clinic might offer anything from basic checkups and cleaning to pain-free tooth removal to putting in dental implants or plastic retainers. Family dentistry in particular describes a dental practice that can take on an entire family as clients at once, and family dentistry means that anyone, young or old, can get dental care at the local dentist’s office. This makes family dentistry, like family doctor’s offices, quite flexible and helpful, and a person may look up local family dentistry offices online if they have to. How might someone narrow down the selection of family dentistry offices to find the right one, and what sort of dental care might they get there?
Find A Dental Office
A client may look up a local dentist’s office, such as family dentistry offices, for a number of reasons. Their current dental practice may have closed, or perhaps it is no longer accepting the client’s health insurance. Or, a child in the family became old enough for the dentist, and the clients need a more flexible dental office than an adult-only practice. In other cases, the family has moved to a new city or county, and they must find local offices at once. In any of these cases, a client can conduct an online search for dental practices, and specify the type that they need. They can look up “best pediatric dental offices nearby” or “family dentistry offices near me”, and refine that search with their city name or their ZIP code.
This will bring up a whole list of results, and the client can strike out dental offices that don’t accept their insurance policy or those that aren’t taking on new patients. Meanwhile, the clients can visit the other dental practices in person to evaluate them, and bring along their children, too. This way, the clients get a fair and clear impression of the office, and the adults can consult the dentists and dental assistants who work there. The clients can consider the staff’s credentials, educational background, patient reviews, awards and recognition, and more. The client’s child, meanwhile, can form his or her own impression of the dental office, and if that child feels comfortable there and gets along with the staff, the parents may consider that office a solid option. The family may visit a number of offices like this until they find the best option, and sign up as patients.
Basic Dental Care
The staff at a family dentistry office can provide dental care for any patient, whether a child, a middle-aged parent, or an elderly citizen. Children may have sealant put on their teeth and the dentist can teach them good dental care habits, and older patients may get a variety of checkups and cosmetic dentistry done for them.
Sometimes, a visit to the local family dentistry office means more than a routine cleaning. Some patients have teeth growing in crooked, and clear plastic retainers can be fitted over them to help the teeth straighten back out. Such retainers are clear and discreet, and they can be molded to fit the patient’s teeth. Children can have braces fitted on as their teeth grow in, to keep them straight and properly spaced from each other.
Cosmetic dentistry also involves tooth whitening if so desired, as most beauty standards for men and women call for straight, white teeth. Plaque and tobacco can stain teeth, so tooth whitening can reverse that. Dental implants such as crowns can fit over cracked or worn out teeth to restore their full shape and function, and this can protect the vulnerable tooth underneath. Finally, a missing tooth can be replaced entirely with a dental bridge, a realistic replica tooth modeled after the patient’s real teeth. Such a dental bridge can be fitted into the gap and held in place with covers that slip over the real teeth flanking the gap. Such a bridge can restore the patient’s smile, not to mention make speech and eating easier since the gap is now filled in.
