Family & Preventive Dentistry

Preventive Dentistry for All Ages

At Miranda & Ortega Dental Care, we provide care to your entire family from the time they are toddlers to when they are adults or elderly. The following is information about our preventive dental care services, as well as our restorative dental services and advanced aesthetic dental services. When you are ready to schedule your initial visit, just call or click here to schedule an appointment.

During your initial or returning visit in our office, we will review your medical history for any changes from your previous visit. This information is essential for us to treat you safely.

What we need to know:

Updated list of medications, including dosing and frequency
Recent hospitalization or surgeries
New Diagnoses or conditions
Resolutions of previous illnesses or conditions

Providing us with this information ensures that we are treating you in the best way possible. If your illness or medications put you at increased risk for decay or infection, we may discuss options to lower that risk at your appointment. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make your visit more comfortable.

Dental Botox

The benefits of Botox as adjunctive therapy in dental and cosmetic treatment is rapidly growing. Botox has useful clinical uses as an adjunct in TMJ and bruxism cases, even more so for patients with moderate chronic temporomandibular joint and facial pain. Botox is a muscle relaxer and when given in typically half the dosage used for facial wrinkle smoothing treatment, it can greatly reduce the intensity of the muscle contractions that contribute to TMJ and facial pain and give the patient significant relief.

Botox can also be used as a non-surgical alternative to attenuate hypermobile upper lips (high lip line) that result in gummy smiles. With Botox therapy the muscles surrounding the lip are weakened so they cannot raise the lip as high as before. This is done carefully, so the patient maintains full lip competency allowing them to go about their normal activities such as speaking, smiling, puckering and eating.

Sleep Apnea Appliance

Worn only during sleep, an oral appliance fits like a sports mouth guard or an orthodontic retainer. It supports the jaw in a forward position to help maintain an open upper airway. Research shows that oral appliance therapy is an effective treatment option for snoring and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

These Mandibular reposition devices (MRDs) hold the lower jaw in a forward position during sleep. In doing so, they:

Create an anterior movement of the suprahyoid and genioglossal muscles. (The suprahyoid muscle widens the esophagus during swallowing and the genioglossus muscle depresses and protrudes the tongue.)
Decreases the gravitational effect of the tongue
Stretch the soft palate
Stabilize the mandible to the hyoid bone. (The hyoid bone attaches to the muscles of the floor of the mouth and the tongue above; to the larynx below; and to the epiglottis and pharynx behind. This results in an increase in the lateral pharyngeal cross-sectional area of the upper airway to prevent snoring and obstructive apneas.)

Clinical studies show that custom-made MRDs are effective in treating mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea and snoring. They reduce symptoms that go with OSA too, like daytime sleepiness and fatigue. MRDs also help people with severe OSA who have not been able to adhere to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment.

Orthodontics

Crooked teeth and teeth that do not fit together correctly are harder to keep clean, are at risk of being lost early due to tooth decay and periodontal disease, and cause extra stress on the chewing muscles that can lead to headaches, TMJ syndrome and neck, shoulder, and back pain. Correcting an improper bite with orthodontics that may include the use of dental braces or clear teeth aligners (invisible braces), such as Invisalign or Invisalign Teen, limits the possibility of future costly dental problems.

The benefits of orthodontic treatment include a healthier mouth, a more pleasing appearance, and teeth that are more likely to last a life time. If you would like more information on how Orthodontics may improve your dental health please let us know.

Sport Mouth Guards

If you play sports and are concerned about protecting your teeth during practice and competition, we can custom fabricate a mouth guard made just for your teeth.

Dental trauma can occur at any time while participating in a sport. Dental injuries are the most frequently incurred orofacial injuries from sports activities. A mouth guard can help protect your teeth from being broken, displaced, or damaged and requiring years of costly maintenance and restoration. Not only do mouth guards protect the teeth, but they also protect the head against a blow to the jaw that can result in a concussion and loss of consciousness.

Mouth guards help reduce neurological injury by acting as shock absorbers between the upper and lower jaws, without a mouth guard, the trauma of jaws violently jarring together can distribute the impact of the condyles of the mandible against the base of the skull, resulting in concussion.

A custom mouth guard properly fabricated covers and protects all of the teeth, especially the posterior teeth with a prescribed thickness to diffuse impact to the jaw, thereby buffering the transmission of concussive effect to the base of the brain.

If you would like us to make you a custom sport mouth guard, let a member of our staff know when making your appointment so that we can take the time to accommodate you.

Occlusal Bite Guard/Night Guard

Are you grinding or clenching your teeth? Are you waking up with headaches or a sore jaw? If so, a night guard, better known as an occlusal appliance may be recommended to you to help protect your teeth from wearing down prematurely or to improve chronic headaches.

It is very common for people to grind or clench their teeth, and this leads to worn, flat, and unattractive teeth. These parafunctional habits (clenching & grinding) can also lead to a number of symptoms affecting teeth, muscles, and jaw joint (TMJ). Teeth can become very sensitive to cold and hot, they can become loose or even break into pieces. At your next appointment, ask us if we think you would benefit from one of these.

If recommended based on your signs of tooth-tooth wear (attrition) or symptoms (headaches or facial muscle tenderness), we will begin by taking a custom impression of your upper and lower teeth. From these molds, models will be fabricated and a custom occlusal guard will be fabricated and equilibrated to provide you with the protection you need to preserve your teeth for a life time. This will give you the best possible chance of preventing premature destructive tooth wear that can lead to extensive dental related restorative needs and even loss of teeth. For more information on this subject please ask your doctors at your next dental visit.

Fluoride Treatment

Acid from foods you eat or drink, along with bacteria in your mouth can eat away the enamel of your teeth. Fluoride helps keep enamel strong and aids in cavity prevention and sometimes even reversal by helping your enamel to remineralize and harden. The hard surface of your roots is called cementum and when exposed to the oral environment it is highly prone to decay because it isn’t as strong as the enamel that covers the crown of a tooth. Fluoride application to exposed root surfaces can help reduce the risk of future decay. Another benefit to fluoride use is its desensitization effects. Topical fluoride application to exposed root areas that are sensitive, can help them remineralize and close off the microscopic channels leading directly to the nerve from the oral environment.

Professional fluoride treatment is a safe and effective way of reducing your risk of dental decay. We use proven methods of fluoride application to safely deliver fluoride to your teeth.