We provide moderate conscious sedation for procedures taking less than 1 hour. Unlike deep sedation which is administered by an anaesthetist and costs $600 per hour, conscious sedation costs only $200. It is suitable for 1 simple wisdom toothe surgery or multiple extractions.
Here is one young gentleman we want to get to the church on time and having teeth like this just won't do . He was wearing a removable plastic denture. His central incisor is dead.
His gums are still not "level". Gum surgery will be required to correct that and produce a more harmonious gum line.
Weeks after gum surgery shows remarkable healing. We prepared the 2 bridge supporting teeth.
The temporary bridge is in place. Even thought the shade of the temporary bridge is light, it appears darker than the patient's bleached teeth.
Sure, the number of surgical cases rose after we became Medisave accredited. But along with those minority of genuine surgical cases, came a majority of irritating enquiries.
“Wa, your clinic accepts Medisave payment ah? Good wor. Ei, I do scaling can use Medisave or not?”
“For surgery only. Here is the list http://www.luckyplazadental.com/medisave/
“Scaling cannot ah? The filling can or not?”
“Please check the list of surgical procedures that are covered.”
“Filling also cannot ah? Then braces leh?”
It happens on the phone, it happens at the reception counter and it happens especially in email enquiries. Certainly, these people must either have seen the We are a Medisave accredited day surgery centre. sign at our clinic or saw our webpage with a list of claimable surgical procedures. So why do they still ask us these questions?
“Crown can or not huh?”
“Root canal can or not huh?”
As we receive more and more of these emails, we become more and more convinced that Singaporeans are becoming functionally illiterate. Is the word “surgery” such a piece of proprietary jargon that laymen can be excused for not knowing what it means? That’s obviously not true. Whenever we mention surgery to someone with an impacted wisdom tooth, he/she runs for the door. So why don’t people understand what surgery means when they see the word Medisave? Does seeing the word Medisave diminish one’s ability to read?
Perhaps it’s a little like the Hokkien pengs of yester-years who didn’t understand any orders in English except “book out”. Or could all these irritating enquiries come from spies acting on behalf of competitors who just want to see us wasting our time explaining to fake patients who pretend not to know? We may never know the source of the problem, but literacy aside, anyone not willing to pay for something not claimable is obviously not a very good patient to begin with.
Extraction just done on the right side. There is hardly any gap between the lateral and the first premolar. This will be the easy side.
The other canine has also been extracted. Gum surgery done, exposing more crown height for the lateral incisors and the premolars. The gap on the right side is more significant.
Here's the patient's left side. There is a gap about half a tooth wide. We have already done root canal on the left incisors. We will later cut them off and rebuild with post crowns to close the gap.
4th day after surgery. Check out the healing.
The teeth have been trimmed down and temporary plastic crowns placed.
We will wait 2 months for the gums to stabilise, then we'll place emax crowns over them.
Emax crowns fitted, another ready for have nice smile.
Flexible dentures created a great deal of excitement when they were first launched. No more ugly metal wires. No more broken dentures. What's more, the denture can be bent or even twisted. It springs right back into its original shape. But the flexible denture fever quickly turned cold. Patients complained of dentures that didn't function (no chewing power) and caused pain whenever they tried to eat anything harder than boiled potatoes. Dentists complained of a material that curls up when trimmed and pressure spots that remain after trimming.
A few years ago, I had a debate with a manufacturer of a system of flexible denture material. I argued that basic prosthodontic principles dictate that major connectors of any removable denture cannot be flexible. For a long while, I have been making hybrid acrylic dentures with flexible clasps and rigid plates to take advantage of both systems. However, these dentures were breakable like acrylic dentures and the bond between the two materials was never perfect. I didn't believe that a fully flexible denture will work. True enough, many patients who have done their long-span flexible dentures have a lot of complaints.
Finally, one manufacturer recognised the problem and introduced a new partially flexible material. Flexite Plus is now our material of choice for all removable partial dentures. Unlike their predecessors which were flexible throughout and create problems when they are long-span, the new material is selectively flexible and shows rigidity when due.
The biggest advantage of this sort of dentures is that unlike the hybrid dentures I used to do, they are unbreakable like the former fully flexible denture systems. Like their fully flexible predecessors, they also do not have the unsightly clasps seens in chrome dentures. Flexite Plus clasps are still pink in colour. Unlike their predecessors, however, Flexite Plus plates are not flexible. This makes them capable of supporting chewing forces in long-span dentures.
