Minimal Intervention Dentistry is a contemporary approach to managing oral and dental healthcare. It is a holistic team-care approach to help patients maintain long-term oral health with preventive, person-centred, behaviour related care plans.
The concept is simple: it’s to empower our patients to take responsibility for their oral health. Early detection, diagnosis, prevention and control of disease is our preference, rather than just drilling and filling. Research shows that after a tooth has been drilled and filled, it loses its structural integrity and is therefore weaker. Furthermore, when that filling needs replacing, the ensuing cavity is even more extensive, thus harming the remaining tooth further. This continued mechanistic intervention of a tooth, known as the restorative death spiral, invariably results in the tooth either dying or unfortunately requiring an extraction.
We at Dove Holistic Dental Centre know that tooth decay is a slowly progressing disease, and can be reversed if the lesions are caught in time. Not all tooth decay will result in holes that need fillings. We will treat early sites of tooth decay non-invasively using materials that will reverse the decay process and reduce the risk of a cavity forming.
Should a cavity require a filling, we at Dove Holistic Dental Centre will use techniques and bio-materials that preserve the maximum amount of tooth structure and are also gentle to the tooth and of course you the patient.
Many dentists still treat tooth decay as gangrene and will completely cut it out as well as a surrounding area of healthy tooth tissue, increasing the risk of the tooth needing root canal treatment and weakening the tooth. At Dove Holistic Dental Centre, we know this is an out-dated approach to filling holes. Research shows that with the right techniques and using bio-materials, we can cut smaller cavities, place smaller fillings and allow the opportunity for the tooth to repair.