Photo Credit: Tara Winstead via www.pexels.com

Australia is home to some exceptional dental care with many different treatments on offer. While there are numerous treatments for emergencies that can be covered by Medicare insurance, most dental practices require some form of dental cover, especially cosmetic treatments. To help you decide on the right treatment, we’ve listed the most popular cosmetic dental procedures in Australia, what they involve, and what they’re used for.

Whitening
The most obvious option for dental treatments is teeth whitening. There are a few different ways that this can be done, and that is either at home or in the dentist chair. When going for this treatment at a dental practice, you’ll undergo a session to attain the shade you’re looking for, and this will be done using a gel that contains hydrogen peroxide or bleach. Once this has been applied to your teeth, your dentist will shine a powerful heat lamp directly onto your teeth to expedite the bleaching process.

You’ll generally do this over an hour with a few breaks in-between. Whitening can also be done at home using special whitening kits, which are less powerful and take longer to complete treatment but are relatively affordable and can provide good results if you take the process seriously and read the instructions.

Implants
When you’ve lost a tooth or had to have one surgically removed, the gap leftover can be rectified in a few different ways. One of these ways is by adding an implant to the gap. This implant is essentially a screw that is fixed into your jawbone via a surgical procedure. Then, a false tooth is screwed into that fitting, serving as a perfect replacement.

The procedure itself is fairly straightforward, and you’ll be relatively unable to tell the difference between the false tooth and your real ones. The only downside is that you need to have good quality gums and enough bone in your jaw for the procedure to be done effectively. You’ll also need to make sure you keep the area around the implant as clean as possible, just like you would with real teeth, to avoid gum disease.

For a treatment like this, you’ll want to make sure you’ve chosen a quality, experienced dentist, as the process requires some skill. Finding a good dentist in the Brisbane area, such as Pure Dentistry, is highly recommended. Visit their website to find out about the many different treatments they offer at puredentistry.com.au.

Veneers
Sometimes a person’s teeth can become so worn down, damaged, and stained that no whitening treatment will improve their smile. However, there is a remedy for this, and that is to get porcelain veneers. These are a cap fixed over the top of your real teeth and attached to them permanently. Your teeth would need to be filed down for the veneers to fit over them, but then those veneers could last you for a significant amount of time. If looked after well enough, a porcelain shell could last for decades, so while they may be expensive now, it’s worth it in the long run.

Crowns
These are similar to veneers in a sense due to them acting as a shield of sorts for your real teeth. A dental crown can be added to a broken, damaged, or decayed tooth that is still alive so that the tooth doesn’t end up suffering further damage or falling out. A broken tooth can be incredibly sensitive if the root is showing, and this can be said the same for teeth with decay. The crown will be affixed to the damaged tooth so that you can continue to use that tooth properly. You can receive both metal and porcelain crowns, but metal ones tend to be more durable but aren’t as visually appealing to some as a porcelain one would be.

However, these porcelain crowns aren’t usually added to teeth that do a lot of work, such as molars, as they tend to come loose or get damaged from the excessive grinding of food. Many people agree to have metal ones put in for these teeth at the back as they aren’t easy to see and serve to be much more durable.

Bridges
If you’ve one or more teeth, often it’ll be recommended that you have a dental bridge added to your smile. This is where a false tooth or teeth are suspended in place of your missing ones by being affixed to two crowns on either side of the gap. The procedure for dental bridges is simple and very effective for repairing a large gap in your smile. This is a permanent addition to your teeth, just like veneers are, and can’t be removed regularly like you’d be able to with dentures, for example.

A bridge can last for many years, too, if looked after. Still, if you don’t take care of the teeth that are supporting the bridge, you may end up with tooth decay or gum disease, putting the entire bridge at risk, so again, make sure you keep your teeth as clean as possible and make sure you not only brush but use floss and mouthwash too.