Dentalnews (en)

Root inflammations can have many causes, the most common one being cavities!

Some other possible causes are plastic fillings, excessive drilling when setting crowns, or after an accident – more details here.

If root treatment is not performed correctly, or complications arise, or if necessary treatment is not performed at all, then the dental nerve causes an inflammation in the bone, leading to a cyst in the root. This need not always be accompanied by pain, however. More on this topic here.

At some point the inflammation will make itself felt through the mucous membrane, leading to a fistula at the dental root. If the problem is not too big, root treatment may help to reverse the process, otherwise a root tip resection will have to be performed.

It is not uncommon to feel pain after root treatment!

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This may happen if not all of the dental nerve is removed. Or if the hollowed out part of the tooth is not completely filled up, then pain may appear after root treatment.

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Here you can see what causes root problems and what you can do to prevent them.
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When is root treatment necessary and what is the right way to do it?
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A filler called Epiphany Sealer and Resilon Sticks ® have been developed which seal the canal much more tightly than the Guttapercha used until now.
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Sometimes root treatment is performed properly, but if dental fillings start to come loose over the years, bacteria get into the canal by way of the dental crown and start to multiply inside the canal – especially if the Guttapercha used did not seal up the canal 100%.
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Animal experiments have shown that the new filler system works much better than Guttapercha. Ask your dentist about Epiphany Sealer and Resilon sticks!

What happens when a dental implant sticks out into the maxillary sinus?

Implants and bone reconstruction!
In order for dental implants to hold securely you need to have enough bone. But if a patient has been missing teeth for too long or suffered periodontitis, often there is not enough bone left in the upper jaw. An operation designed to reconstruct bone – called a sinus lift –  has to be performed before implanting.

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Bone reconstruction in the upper jaw
Despite the most careful planning, implants sometimes end up sticking out into the maxillary sinus. Patients must be informed, as a lot of them get dental implants without realizing that the maxillary sinus got damaged in the process.

Is there a greater risk of losing an implant?
Sinus infections may represent a risk, even during a common head cold, implants may get infected due to the lack of a protective bone layer. Then you can lose an implant.
The picture shows a patient with implants in her upper jaw (to the right in the picture). The implants (black) clearly stick out into the maxillary sinus (blue). The patient was not told about this problem – even though the implants stuck out from the very beginning. The operation took place three years ago, right now there are no inflammations around the implants – but there are some in the rest of the teeth!

Yes and no, most people have good teeth but bad habits!

If you have most of your fillings in your side teeth, then you are one of these people. The dental x-ray shows the fillings highlighted in blue – these are the bright spots in the picture!
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When we start getting fillings in our side teeth, most of us just automatically assume that we have bad teeth, but there is actually a reason why fillings and missing teeth predominate on the side.
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Learning to brush your teeth right takes practice!
The window display – or front teeth, gets a lot of attention, but when it comes to the side we get lulled into a false sense of security by the fresh taste of toothpaste and don’t take as much time to clean them properly. This enables plaque build-up, which eventually results in cavities and periodontitis.
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Bad teeth are actually very rare!
Very few people have congenitally bad teeth, and in these cases all the teeth are affected, even the front teeth.

Good dentist – bad dentist! Are our dentists worse than they were 50 years ago?

Well… yes and no.

No, because the amount of knowledge we have at our disposal is steadily growing, and today’s highly interconnected global information network  makes for a steady stream of new information.

Yes, because studying is becoming more and more like schooling. This seems to be a general trend and not found only in dentistry.
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Acquiring knowledge used to be entirely up to the student. Unlike school, with its schedules, curricula and assignments,a university would leave a student to decide what, where and how to learn.
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Of course this meant that the universities had to deal with a certain number of students who never quite managed to „complete“ their studies, but these tended to give up after a while, thus making it possible to separate the wheat from the chaff. Nowadays, internships and colloquia are used to steer students through their studies, leaving little room for personal initiative. At some universities you are basically „carried“ through your studies.
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Doctors who graduate like this usually stay on in university clinics, since a hospital or clinic acts as a kind of „buffer“ when mistakes happen, a luxury not given to doctors who have their own offices. Now, this does not mean that doctors who work at university clinics are „incompetent“.

However, it has been observed that talented doctors tend to use clinics as a kind of springboard to acquire knowledge and skills. Later on, they “cash in” on what they learned when they open their own offices . Few stay behind at clinics, taking advantage of the possibility to do research and work together with other doctors.
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When talking to a doctor, ask him or her to explain your illness to you, everything can be explained logically and step by step. Moreover, a good doctor should not be afraid to say  – „I don’t know“. If all you get is a vague and incomprehensible explanation, and the doctor seems to be beating around the bush, this is usually a sign that this doctor was „herded through“ their studies.
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Learn for the sake of learning and not just to comply with curricula! Under the old system, it was much easier to simply select out the good and bad students – and one thing that hasn’t changed is that the ones who succeed are the ones who want to! What has changed is that nowadays it is easier for a lot of students to get through  their studies by following lecture notes and a catalogue of questions, by simply „learning by rote“.
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Dentistry is a craft, as are many other courses of study and professions! Universities should try to use a selection process to weed out those who have little skill, and also very little discipline and personal initiative.

Medicine, dentistry and other social professions have to do with ethics, morals and sustainability. The practice of choosing the costliest course of treatment over the best is unfortunately being encouraged by the way in which university studies are set up!

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More about this topic here!