A dentist Gulfport Mississippi is one who is skilled in and licensed to practice the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases, injuries, and malformations of the teeth, jaws, and mouth and who makes and inserts false teeth.
Types of Dentist
Periodontist
A periodontist focuses on problems that patients have with their gums, bone and tissues which support the teeth. To explain bone loss to our patients, dentist Gulfport Mississippi compare the support of the teeth with bone around them in the mouth like a fence post that is placed into the ground with concrete around it. When a six-foot fence post has four feet of supportive concrete around it in the ground, it is very strong and stable. If the same six-foot fence post only has six inches of concrete around it in the ground, it can be moved very easily and is neither stable nor strong. A similar situation occurs when patients lose bone around a tooth; the tooth becomes mobile and the patient can eventually lose the tooth.
Endodontist
An endodontist dentist Gulfport Mississippi is also known as a root canal specialist. They treat the sick, dead, inflamed or infected nerve of a tooth that can cause excruciating pain. The inside of each tooth has living blood vessels and cells called the pulp. If a cavity, a crack or trauma affect the pulp, the nerve dies and becomes infected and can cause a pressure and inflammation in the bone and tissue supporting the tooth.
Orthodontist
An orthodontist dentist Gulfport Mississippi in the past only did braces on kids and adults to straighten their teeth. Now the field includes dentofacial orthopedics as well. The goal of both of these modalities is to correct a bad bite or a malocclusion. The bite is the way that the upper and lower set of teeth actually come together. The teeth are ideally designed to bite in the front and chew in the back and are shaped with that function in mind. If the bite relationship is not set up properly, the tooth structure can actually wear out the wrong way or even break. Jaw and neck problems like TMD (Temporomandibular joint dysfunction) or TMJ (temporomandibular joint) can also occur. Bad bites can be caused by irregular jaw growth patterns, crowded or misaligned teeth or bad habits.
Oral Surgeon
An oral and maxillofacial surgeon is best known for wisdom tooth extractions. This is an important treatment, but oral surgeons do much more than this. Generally, wisdom teeth do not have the room that they need to erupt and come into place as the last teeth in the mouth on the upper and the lower arches. If they are allowed to remain they can crowd your teeth, cause infection or even damage other teeth or bone in your mouth. They can be fully impacted, which means that they are covered by the bone and the gums, partially impacted or fully erupted in the mouth.
