What are Considered Major Restorative Dental Services?

Suppose you haven’t been to the dentist in a while and realize that there’s a problem with a few of your teeth. Your first instinct would be to make a quick appointment with an experienced dentist such as Fain Dental Arts of North Miami: Sylvan Fain DDS for them to identify the situation, determine its severity and select the most appropriate treatment option. You might come across words like “basic” or “major” restoration to describe the various treatments recommended by the coordinator or dentists as they walk you through your treatment plan.  

What’s the Difference? 

A basic restorative dental procedure involves treatments that are beyond checkups and general cleanings. However, they aren’t major and usually include routine fillings. On the other hand, major restorative dental treatments are services that require multiple phases of therapy to correct because they weren’t addressed earlier on and have now become severe. Examples of these major restorative dental services include: 

Crowns 

This is usually a tooth-shaped cap covering the entire tooth and is generally made of either pure metal or a mixture of metal and porcelain. When a patient has a damaged, cracked, broken, or decayed tooth, the dentist would recommend this treatment option to help restore the tooth to its healthy form. Your dentist would first take an impression of the tooth and surrounding teeth and let a lab specialist prepare the artificial crown. The old tooth would then be drilled down and the new crown fixed onto it.  

Bridges 

As the name suggests, “bridges” reduce the gaps that exist between teeth. A bridge consists of a crown on both ends, which tend to be anchored to the artificial tooth between them. Your dentist would take an impression of the surrounding teeth to create the bridge that would keep other teeth from moving out of place within the jawline. Once the bridge is installed, it can function like natural teeth.  

Dental Implants 

Dental Implants are used to replace missing teeth in a patient’s mouth. They also act as suitable alternatives to dentures. However, for them to be used in place of dentures, the patient’s loss of teeth should have made their mouth shrink and, therefore, unable to support the dentures. Your dentist can use these implants to replace a single tooth or several missing teeth at once. The implants are made of two major parts; a metal anchor as the root and a false tooth that resembles a crown. The dentist would drill the titanium screws into the jaw to act as the root and fix the crown onto it.  

Wisdom Tooth Extraction 

Wisdom teeth are the teeth that grow at the back of your jaws and are usually the last to protrude during a person’s late teens. A person with all their teeth would have four wisdom teeth on each side of their jaws. However, there are incidents whereby some of these wisdom teeth grow at an irregular angle or get stuck and only protrude partially. These types of wisdom teeth are referred to as impacted and need to be extracted for orthodontic treatment.  

Dentures 

Also referred to as false teeth, dentures are used to replace natural teeth that have fallen off. There are two types of dentures, namely complete or removable dentures. Complete dentures serve as implants and cannot be removed by the patient, while removable dentures can be taken out at any time and cleaned. If anyone loses their teeth, they won’t chew, and their diets can be affected significantly. Therefore, dentures would be prescribed to them to help chew food and prevent sagging facial muscles.  

Oral Surgery 

Procedures like full mouth reconstruction exist to help patients restore their entire mouth’s setting, including the teeth and jaws. This procedure works well on misaligned teeth and jaws that would require more than just braces to fix.  

How Much Can Dental Insurance Cover on Major Restorative Dental Services? 

Major Restorative Dental Services are usually covered included in the lowest “tier” of reimbursement. Most preventive treatments such as checkups and general cleaning are generally covered to about 100%, while basic treatments are covered up to about 80%. However, major restorative dental services tend to receive the least amount of coverage, catering to about 50% of the cost while the patient is left with the other 50%.  

If you don’t want to visit the Dentist regularly, make sure to have the best Dental Care Routine.

Book Your Appointment Today 

Call Fain Dental Arts of North Miami: Sylvan Fain DDS today to schedule an appointment and have an expert cater to all your dental needs. Don’t hesitate or wait for the problem to go away because, in almost all scenarios, it doesn’t and might end up being worse.