We take your insurance and we’re accepting new patients! Carpenters Trust, NW Laborers, Operating Engineers Local 302, Painters Trust, Sound Health Welfare Trust (formerly Retail Clerks), and others! While we have always accepted the union insurances for our patients, it has come to our attention that many dentists do not.

 

Our team at Dental Care Design is here to provide General and Cosmetic Dentistry to you, your family and your friends! Our goal is to offer the highest quality, most affordable, and newest technologies and techniques to all of our patients.

 

We accept the union insurances benefits as is with no additional costs for covered services!

Tooth Whitening is a well established procedure in the world of cosmetic dentistry. Hydrogen Peroxide, the most common ingredient, and the active ingredient in Zoom!, has been safely used for many years in the treatment of teeth, gums, and other soft tissues of the mouth. If you’re hesitant, you’re smart, and you have every right to be so, but talk to your dentist to find out if Zoom! is right for you.

The whitening process is effective on almost every sort of discolored teeth, even those with darker stains, such as those caused by antibiotics, coffee, tea and nicotine, are all ideal for the deep whitening powers of Zoom. The degree of whiteness will vary from one patient to the next, of course, depending on the structure of the teeth, but that’s no reason to wait any longer for the white and lustrous smile you know you’ve always deserved.The Zoom chair side whitening system is not for everybody, and if you find a dentist that says otherwise, you’d be wise to run for the hills as quick as you can. This advanced, patent pending system for tooth whitening is safe, effective, and fast, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everybody. In less than an hour you teeth will become dramatically whiter, with a level of convenience so far beyond the yesteryear methods of chemical trays, overnight treatments and unbelievable hassle, you’ll likely be shocked at the results you can enjoy in just a single treatment.All that in less than an hour, if you’re a candidate. 
The procedure is simple, and begins with a short preparation to cover your lips and gums, leaving only your teeth exposed. The Zoom! Clinician then applies the whitening gel, which has been formulated by a team of patent-winning scientists to react to the unique lightwave system present only in your dentist’s office. The light and gel work together to break up stains and discoloration, leaving you only with a bright, white smile that will last, with proper care, for many years to come.If you’re looking for serious results and you don’t have the time to wait, ask your doctor, dentist or clinician about Zoom!, the number one tooth whitening system on the market. It isn’t right for everyone, but if it’s right for you, you may enjoy the fastest results available on the market before you can say, “I have an interview to go to!”

Millions of people spend more than a billion dollars a year buying products to get a whiter smile, and whether you do the math or not, that’s an awful, awful lot of money. You want a beautiful smile, sure, everybody does, but if you don’t know there are hidden dangers in trying to get it, you may need to read a little bit further.

The products on the market range from over the counter gels and strips to power bleaching and laser treatments that can only be performed by licensed dental practitioners. But, experts say too much bleaching can actually give you the opposite effect of what you’re looking for.

Have you ever bleached a white shirt so many times that it finally turned yellow? The same can happen to your teeth, if you’re not careful.

Jennifer Pinney is an important and well known Hollywood figure who said, “You look at Jessica Simpson… Her teeth; it looks like she paints them white and I love it! I just wish I could get my teeth that white.”

To get her own million dollar smile, Pinney tried over the counter whitening strips at home with almost zero results. She then headed to a licensed dentist for a powerful whitening procedure called Zoom!â„¢, which she suggests made all the difference.

“I chose Zoom! whitening because it takes just over an hour [at the dentist's office],” said Penney. “And the upkeep is minimal!”

“You can overdo it,” explain experts. “Some people can whiten so much that they literally whiten the white out of their teeth and their teeth become translucent and they appear gray.”

“Some of these over the counter products have not been tested and there are lawsuits that are pending for materials that have actually caused gum trauma or caused the tooth to actually dissolve.” say doctors.

“That’s why I chose to go to the dentist,” said Pinney. “Your face is something everybody sees and you don’t want to mess anything up.”

There are a number of technological innovations that have turned dentistry on its ear in the last decade, and one of them is the Key-3 Laser Dentistry System manufactured by KaVo. This is a gentle and cool laser with such a short pulse that your nerves are physically incapable of even noticing it, so you won’t feel any pain, even if you’re getting your gums scaled back to reduce or eliminate that “gummy smile”. The KaVo laser penetrates to microscopically shallow levels, which makes it exceptionally precise. Here’s what the laser does: 1 – It destroys bacteria, even in deep pockets between the tooth and the gum, 2 – It reduces the need for dental drilling or anesthetics, 3 – It removes plaque and tartar build up, 4 – It penetrates microscopically tiny pockets where gum disease can begin, 5 – It gives your dentist continuous feedback as to whether tartar is still present, 6 – It provides a fast, safe, and effective way to do root canals, scaling and planing of tooth and root surfaces, and other dental procedures that have traditionally been uncomfortable and invasive, 7 – It seals the gum tissue to prevent infection and promote faster healing after dental surgery.

If you had asked your grandparents what the future of dentistry could possibly be, it’s unlikely that they would have imagine a tool like this. It makes the process quicker, more efficient and effective, and far more comfortable, and without any additional cost. In a win-win this universal, the only people not coming out ahead are the patients of dentists who have yet to adopt a KaVo system into their practice.

It’s important to note that so far there is no evidence to support a direct cause-and-effect of oral systemic relationships that directly connects the mouth with the rest of your body. That’s well and good, but try telling someone suffering an impacted wisdom tooth that the pain they feel through the whole starboard side of their body is imaginary and you’ll start to understand who entirely entwined this human system is. The oral-systemic relationship in your mouth refer to the association between the health of your oral cavity – teeth, gums, tongue, bone, soft tissues, - and the rest of your body.

If you’re in pain, I think you already know you’re a bit out of whack. Before about ten-fifteen years ago, medical and dental professionals generally believed that health issues were totally exclusive f the health of the mouth and teeth. In other words, you could be strong as a horse with poor teeth, and it wouldn’t impact your body in bad ways, and you could have sickly joints that would never come back to haunt the jowls of your, well, jowls.  

Today we know such things are untrue, and that the systems of the body are all interconnected, not just in terms of blood and oxygen flow, but in other forms as well. Have you ever had a tooth ache that gave you a sore throat and made the whole side of your face tinge with tender pain? That’s not a figment of your imagination, that’s very real and exactly what we’re talking about. What you perceive is just the tip of the iceberg. Whether you feel the pain in your tooth or not, that infection can already be spreading throughout your body causing serious, perhaps even irreparable harm. Periodontal disease is present when inflammation and infection destroy the tissue that support your teeth.

You may have heard of Gingivitis from some silly mouthwash commercials, but just because you saw it between reruns of Seinfeld and Friends doesn’t mean it isn’t real. This common form of mild inflammation, if left untreated, can eventually become periodontitis, which leads directly to the destruction of gum tissue. It’s at this stage that oral bacteria can enter the bloodstream, run its course through the body, and have its pick of the litter as to which organs it may like to infect. Your brain? Your heart? Your liver, kidney or lymph nodes? Considering the potential association between infections of the teeth and gums, and other health problems of inarguably more serious natures, the prevention of periodontitis should be addressed early and with the same seriousness you dedicate to washing your hands, putting gas in your car, and paying your rent. Early prevention and detection may be the most important step in your overall health, and your dentist can help you understand the risks faced in general, as well as the risks you may face directly and personally yourself.It may not seem like much when you skip a brushing after a meal, but that may be the infection that goes to your heart, and once it does, there may be little that can help you. Consider instead just a quick and painless checkup to help you understand what risk, if any, you may be facing.

Does the idea of going to the dentist make your heart skip a beat? It used to be the case that dentists worried about how routine visits could do more than that to your lub-dubbing ticker, but that was twenty-five years ago. Back then, patients with heart conditions such as murmurs or irregular heartbeats going in for a routine dental visit were asked to take an antibiotic a day before, and then again two days after those visits. Have times changed? Any scratch on your skin or gums, even a very small one, can lead to viral or biotic germs entering the blood stream, and that can be critically serious, especially for those of advancing years or compromised immune systems. Under normal conditions the body will take care of germs without any trouble, but it’s entirely possible for germs to get into the blood stream and infect the endocardium of the heart causing a condition called infective endocarditis, which is fatal in about 25% of cases, by some estimates.And it isn’t just limited to “going to the dentist”, but the very infection that may already have taken up residence in your gums, cavities or beneath an ill-placed filling may already be sending out sentries looking for a buck so grand to fell as your heart.  So can antibiotics help or hurt? Most of the retrospective studies published to date have shown the cons of taking antibiotics outweigh the advantages, with the onset of diarrhea, allergies and other side effects. Basically this means that it’s so incredibly unlikely that a healthy person would require them, that the only notable outcome from taking them is the side-effects.If you have artificial heart valves, a history of heart infections or problems with blood flow in the heart, you should still talk very seriously with your dentist about the possibility of using antibiotics pre and/or post-op.

If you want to get technical, fluoride is the reduced form of fluorine. Both organic and inorganic compounds containing the element fluorine are considered fluorides, for what it’s worth. As a halogen, fluorine forms a monovalent ion (−1 charge). The range of fluorides is considerable as fluorine forms compounds with all elements except He, Ne, and Ar[citation needed]. Fluorides range from severe toxins such as sarin to life-saving pharmaceuticals such as efavirenz and from refractory materials such as calcium fluoride to highly reactive sulfur tetrafluoride.

Alright, now that we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s take a quick stroll through the history of it.

1909 - Colorado Springs dentist Frederic K. McKay asks the US dental community to help him find an explanation for the “Colorado brown stain,” or “Texas Teeth,” a discoloring of teeth common to the Pikes Peak area. Though residents’ teeth are mottled and discolored, they have far fewer cavities than typical, which is cause for question.

1927 - A dentist in Bauxite, AR, reports extensive staining of residents’ teeth. The town gets its water from a deep well near the site of an aluminum mine; fluoride is a waste by-product of aluminum mining, but the answer isn’t quite clear just yet.

1931 – Using a new analysis on the Bauxite well water, a chemist finds high concentrations of the naturally occurring substance fluoride. McKay hears about the test and sends water samples from other cities. McKay and others eventually determine that fluoride causes the staining but none speak out yet about the prevention of tooth decay.

1939 - Researcher Gerald J. Cox at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh releases results from a rat study (showing healthier teeth) to support his recommendation that water be fluoridated.

1942 - The National Institutes of Health publishes a study of 7,000 children which shows that fluoride at 1 part per million in water is enough to minimize tooth decay without causing discoloration (or dental fluorosis, as it’s now called.)

1945 - Federal scientists choose four pairs of cities for a 13- to 15-year study of fluoridation: Grand Rapids and Muskegon, MI; Newburgh and Kingston, NY; Evanston and Oak Park, IL; and Brantford and Sarnia, Ontario. Grand Rapids becomes the first city in the world to have fluoridated water.

1951 - Muskegon, the comparison city for Grand Rapids, begins fluoridating its own water supply. Communities across the country join in, well in advance of any published results of the four-cities studies.

1955 - Procter & Gamble introduces Crest, the first fluoride toothpaste endorsed by the American Dental Association.

1990 - As part of its “Healthy People 2000″ plan, the CDC sets a goal of getting fluoridated water to 75% of Americans. Then, as now, roughly two-thirds have treated water.

Whether you live in a fluoridated water area or not, the evidence is pretty, well, evident. Fluoride will harden enamel and prevent tooth decay in modest doses. If the dosage becomes too high, the worst possibility is that a patient may need to consider a switch to a tooth-whitening formula of toothpaste.

Regardless of your age, you should ask your dentist about the benefits of a fluoride treatment. Who knows, the tooth you save my just be your own.

Sedation dentistry promises an experience most memorable because of how perfectly forgettable it is, but some experts have concerns about safety. If you hate having dental work done, this may be just the thing you’ve been waiting for to get your crowns done, your fillings filled or your otherwise miserable experience (by your estimation, not ours) over with before you even know it’s begun. For many, the very experience of going to the dentist is the sort of thing of nightmares. Many don’t feel this way, but for those who do, it’s a very real emotional experience, and one that simple words can not mitigate.  You might put it off and put it off, and once it’s time to go the ramifications have crept up on you with a vengeance. Where you might have had an uncomfortable cleaning and a filling or two might now be a deep cleaning, four fillings and a crown. Can you deal with sitting in the chair for a solid hour or two with the drill whirring away as it breaks through your enamel, or worse still, an existing filling, just to get to the decay that lies beneath?As a teenager, I discovered a mediocre coping mechanism. I brought my Sony Walkman in with me and blasted School of Fish at top volume in vain attempts to drown out the drill. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was what I had, and it almost did the trick. Still, the experience is palpable in my memory even today. But what if there was a way to experience less than that. Sure, the rock and roll is gone, but what if also could be gone the sound and the emotional experience of sitting in the chair? I drove a few friends home after having their wisdom teeth extracted, and all they suffered was a bit of groggy head from it. Why did they fare better from surgery than I did from a filling?

Turns out my question wasn’t as singular as I had suspected, and the answer was that much easier still… It’s called Sedation Dentistry, and not every dentist is in a position (in terms of safety, legality or qualification) to do it, but many are. At Dental Care Design, we are DOCS Certified, which means we are fully trained, certified and entirely ready to perform sedation dentistry. Sit back, relax, and wake up a few minutes later with the whole procedure behind you, regardless of what the procedure might have been.It’s also sometimes called oral conscious sedation, but it’s more commonly referred to as sedation dentistry. It’s easier than you can imagine. All you do is take a sedative pill like a Halcion an hour before your dental appointment, you know, to help you relax. When you get to the office, you may get more pills, depending on how well the first one worked on you and your metabolism. Imagine being oblivious to whatever it is that goes on while you’re sitting in the dental chair. That is the beauty of the approach. The next thing you know, you’re back home.

The American Dental Association (ADA) doesn’t have a problem with dentists administering a single dose of Halcion or similar drugs like Valium, but they do caution against multiple doses that could potentially give patients too much of a drug, causing them to be overly sedated — possibly even unconscious. The safety and success rates are as high or higher than that of any elective surgery, and it comes as no surprise. The event that’s being blanked out is not major surgery or honestly anything that couldn’t be weathered by bearing down, grinning and bearing it (if only grinning was possible). In most cases, it is not a general anesthesia (requiring an anesthesiologist or certified nurse anesthetist) but rather just a simple sedation to take the patient to another place for the duration of the procedure.In many cases sedation dentistry is covered by existing dental insurance plans, and when it isn’t, it’s very common that the extra cost can either be absorbed by the dental provider or paid out of pocket without any negative impact to the insurance payment policy. And let’s be honest, when it comes to the unprecedented comfort afforded by the luxury of opting to sit out your next dental visit, is there any price you wouldn’t pay?

Children from ages 3 to 17 have found unusually high figures for dental complacency. They were referred, in one instance alone, to have been referred by the Dunn County Health Department, coordinating with Rural Health Dental Clinic and local schools, in almost alarming numbers. Many participating families had two or more children who received services. What can you do to protect your children’s dental health?

“We are happy to provide care for these children, but we worry about the thousands of children who need dental care who were not able to be seen — the ones who continue to have trouble eating, sleeping and paying attention in class because their teeth are in such bad shape,� said Dr. Leipnitz, a physician on hand at the event. “Dentists want to be part of the solution, but we can’t solve access to care on our own. A one-day event like Give Kids A Smile isn’t a cure-all, it’s a wake up call. Our children deserve a better health care system that addresses their dental needs.�

The National Institutes of Health reports that 80% of tooth decay is now found in only 25% of children, primarily from low-income families. Public health programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) are designed to help underserved children, but utilization rates are low, and finding dentists willing to accept these programs is even lower still.

“We’re proud of what we’re accomplishing here today. But charity is not a health care system. People shouldn’t have to depend on charity for basic dental care,� says Dr. Joyce. “Give Kids A Smile is meant to accomplish two things—help children get the dental care they so desperately need AND raise awareness that our children deserve a better health care system that addresses their dental health needs.�

In Wisconsin, only 20% of children enrolled in Medicaid received any dental service in 2005. Medicaid program spends less than 1% on dental services for children and adults, and they do it by paying so far below market that patients choose in increasing numbers to forego care altogether.

For adults, it’s one thing, but when it comes to the care of baby teeth, the infections that can come in the first round of pearly chompers can in fact lead to periodontal infections that can destroy the adult teeth before they even begin to bud.

If you have a dental plan that is not accepted by your dentist of choice, you need to look around for an alternative, rather than simply letting the matter go for a future set of teeth. Failure to provide adequate care for baby teeth may lead to far worse outcomes than the (obvious and inevitable) loss of those teeth, but can cause all kinds of serious, long-term problems that can seriously impact adult teeth as well.

Dental Care Design is proud to offer a number of dental financing solutions:
1 – We accept almost every dental plan on the market.
2 – We accept and refer to the likes of Citi Health Card and Capital-One Healthcare Financing, both of which allow for future payment on today’s dental services.

If you have any doubts, hesitations, questions or financial concerns, we are here to give you the best advice we have at our disposal. We may be able to help you, even if at a significant discount, we may be able to refer you to another dentist, or we may be able to find other financial arrangements that work for you.

Remember, there are times when we can wait for payment, but tooth decay never waits for anything at all.

Lead may poison Crowns, Bridges, Veneers or Dentures, and if you’re not careful, it can put a bit of poison in you, as a women in Ohio recently learned the hard way. She became ill because her outsourced dental work was a Chinese-made crown that was laced with lead, a potent, toxic, heavy metal. The worst part was that for all the cost-cutting and lackluster work, she didn’t even save so much as one thin dime.

Sometimes people (and I freely include myself in that equation) accept small discounts for service of a potentially compromised level. I only buy generic drugs, when they are offered, because I’ve been told they are just as good. When it comes time to service my second car, which is now very old, I always buy used parts because I believe them to be good enough for the purpose. Sometimes, it seems, you just can’t be too careful.

How much would you like to see your airline ticket discounted to know the plane was unsafe, contained poisons, or might in fact kill you in the course of a single flight? How would you feel if I told you that you still had to pay full fare, but that the plane was not up to par just the same, and I wasn’t willing to tell you about it?

That’s what some patients are now experiencing throughout the US and UK.

If you think your grand-kids’ toys were bad for bearing a bit of Chinese lead in the mix, that’s nothing when you consider how unlikely they are to put them in their mouths. Now think about the possibility that your last filling came from a factory that throws lead in the smelter to make the metal flow more easily, and that it’s going to forever be in your mouth. Well, maybe not forever, but at least until you get it removed or die from not trying.

It has been estimated that as many as 20% of the crowns, bridges, veneers, dentures and other dental fixtures used by U.S. dentists are made in China or other foreign countries, according to Newsday. Like other imports, an amount less than 1% of dental products are inspected by the Food and Drug Administration, so there is effectively no one standing guard at night to watch this store. The American Dental Association, at least, is investigating.

The ADA recommends asking these questions before having dental and/or replacement work done (of any kind, including fillings, crowns, caps, dentures, partials, bridges, implants or anything else that will be affixed to your person in permanent or semi-permanent fashion):

1. Do you fashion your own crowns, bridges and other dental materials in the office or buy them from a dental lab?
2. Where is the dental lab located?
3. Does the lab outsource crowns or bridges to a foreign country?
4. What materials are going to be used in my restoration?
5. What other options do I have?

If you are uncomfortable asking these questions, you need to get a bit more courageous. The only thing at stake is your very life, and the clinics that provided those un-tested, un-safe dental materials DID NOT pass the savings on to their patients. That means that the entire risk was assumed by the patient, with every last cent of the benefit falling in the lap of the dentist. If you ask these questions and do not like the answer you are given, you can choose a different dentist (who will almost surely charge the same amount for safe, local, heavily regulated materials).

If the cost is the same, why on earth would you ever accept suspect, sub-standard materials. These fixtures are going into your body forever.