Dental treatments in Cookstown: what we do

We look at your teeth, your gums and the soft tissue in your mouth, including a check for anything that shouldn’t be there. If we take an x-ray we’ll tell you why before we do it.

You leave knowing three things: whether anything needs doing, what it would cost, and how long you can reasonably leave it. If nothing needs doing we say so and book you back in six or twelve months, depending on how your mouth is behaving.

A first visit is longer because we take a history and write a plan.

Lauren does the scaling and polishing, and shows you what you’re missing at home — usually the same two or three spots, which is normal and fixable.

Bleeding gums are the thing people most often ignore and most regret ignoring. Gum disease is painless until it isn’t, and the bone it takes doesn’t come back. If we find it early enough it can usually be stopped with cleaning and a change to how you brush.

If you’ve had a rough time in a hygienist’s chair before, say so when you book and we’ll put you in a longer slot.

Amalgam is the silver one. It’s cheaper, it lasts well and it copes with heavy biting forces. White composite matches the tooth and bonds to it, which means we can keep a bit more of the tooth, but it takes longer to place and costs more.

For a back tooth that nobody sees, either is a reasonable choice and we’ll tell you which we’d pick. For a front tooth it’s white.

The price varies with size, so a small filling costs less than the figure on the fees page. We’ll tell you the number before we start.

When the nerve inside a tooth dies or gets infected, the options are to clean the inside of the tooth out and seal it, or to take the tooth out. Root canal treatment is the first of those.

It has a bad reputation it hasn’t deserved for about thirty years. It’s done under local anaesthetic, and for most people the appointment is dull rather than painful — the pain is usually what brought them in, and it stops.

Front teeth are quicker and cheaper than molars, which have more canals. A tooth that has had root treatment often needs a crown afterwards to stop it splitting.

A crown covers what’s left of a tooth and takes the biting force off it. A bridge replaces a missing tooth by anchoring to the teeth either side.

First visit, we shape the tooth and take an impression, and you go home with a temporary. The lab makes the real one. Second visit, we fit it.

Bridges aren’t right for everyone — they involve cutting down healthy teeth either side, which is a real cost. If that’s a bad trade in your case we’ll say so and talk about the alternatives, including doing nothing for now.

Sometimes a tooth is too broken, too loose or too infected to save, and taking it out is the sensible answer rather than the failure.

It’s done under local anaesthetic. You’ll feel pressure and hear noise, and you shouldn’t feel pain — tell us if you do and we’ll top the anaesthetic up.

Difficult extractions, including most buried wisdom teeth, we refer on to a surgeon rather than struggle. We’ll tell you which yours is before you’re in the chair, not during.

A denture replaces missing teeth and is taken out at night. Partial dentures fill gaps and clip to the teeth you still have; full dentures replace a whole arch.

They’re made in stages, with fittings in between, because getting the bite and the shape right takes more than one go. Rushing it produces a denture people leave in a drawer.

Be ready for a few weeks of it feeling wrong. That’s normal, and small adjustments in the first month are part of the price, not an extra.

We take impressions, the lab makes trays that fit only your teeth, and you wear them with a gel for a couple of hours a day for two or three weeks.

It lightens natural tooth. It does nothing to fillings, crowns or veneers, so if you have white work at the front it may end up a different shade to everything around it — worth knowing before you start, not after.

Whitening is only legal in the UK when a dentist is involved. Anything sold as a shop or salon treatment without one is a different thing entirely.

A veneer is a thin shell bonded to the front of a tooth to change its shape or colour.

Fitting one usually means removing some enamel, and enamel doesn’t grow back. That makes veneers a permanent decision on a healthy tooth, which is why we ask what’s actually bothering you first. Often it’s colour, and whitening solves it without touching the tooth.

If a veneer is genuinely the right answer — a chipped or oddly-shaped front tooth, usually — we’ll say so and show you what it involves.

Anna leads the children’s side of the practice. First visits are short and nothing gets done: she counts teeth, has a look, and the child leaves.

Bring them from about their first birthday, or whenever the first tooth turns up. Coming early and often is what keeps it boring, and boring is the whole aim.

Check-ups for under-18s are free on the NHS.

We take an impression and the lab makes a guard that fits only your mouth. It stays put, you can talk in it, and it does the job the boil-and-bite ones from the sports shop only pretend to do.

Worth it for anyone playing Gaelic games, hurling, camogie, rugby or hockey. A front tooth knocked out at fifteen is a lifetime of dentistry; a guard is one appointment and a small bill.

Children grow, so a guard usually needs replacing every year or two.

We hold appointments back each morning for people in pain. Ring early — if they’re gone by the time you get through we’ll tell you straight and give you somewhere else to try, rather than book you in for Thursday and leave you with it.

An emergency appointment is about getting you out of pain and working out what happened. The repair itself is usually a second visit, once you can think about it.

You don’t need to be registered with us to be seen in pain.