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Hours

Regular Hours

Mon - Fri:	7:00 am - 3:00 pm

Andrew Dexter Dunavant, DDS

Orthodontics

Braces
There are also connectors that are designed to support bridges, fasten dentures to the gums or anchor orthodontic braces. When a tooth is extracted (pulled), the bone and gums that were attached to the root of that tooth soon begin to atrophy (shrink back or whither away). The amount of bone and gum loss subsequent to tooth extraction depends upon how many adjacent teeth are lost, how long they were lost (i.e. gum disease or difficult extraction) and how long they have been lost. The process is constant and more rapid in some than in others. The more teeth lost the worse and more rapid the process of atrophy. For illustration purposes, if all remaining teeth are extracted, within 1 year, the jawbones lose 25% of their size and density. This continuous process eventually affects one's facial appearance, chewing comfort and efficiency, diet and nutrition, speech, taste, sensation and social confidence. Denture wearers lose the sensory feedback from the missing tooth roots that tell them how hard they are biting and subsequently end up chewing at one fifth to one tenth their original strength. They lose facial muscle tone and bone density over time. Timely placement of dental implants after tooth extraction helps to prevent this process and preserve not only jawbone mass and density, but also a primitive sensory feedback of how hard you are chewing, which can be a very satisfying feeling. At some point in the atrophy process, there would not be enough jawbone to even support a dental implant. Usually though, the inadequate jawbone can be augmented to support a dental implant with bone grafting.
Orthodontics
This patient wanted to change the fit and appearance of his teeth and fix where he was trapping food between his teeth. He couldn't get his front upper and lower teeth to come together to tear lettuce. He had a front tooth open-bite and back tooth cross-bite that had worn and cracked his back teeth so that he lost the contact between them trapping food. He also had a crowded out (longer looking) upper left cuspid (eye tooth) and he refused to undergo orthodontics. He was treated with extraction of an upper wisdom tooth followed by full mouth restoration with combination ceramic and porcelain-to-metal crowns to correct his back tooth cross-bite, level his bite plane and smile line allowing him to bite his front teeth together. The crowded-out upper left cuspid was reduced as much as possible to realign it and a gingival (gum) advancement performed later to eliminate the long tooth look.

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