Family and Preventive Dentistry for Aledo, Texas

Preventive care begins at home, with regular brushing and flossing, but it doesn’t end there. With our range of preventive solutions, we help you enjoy added protection from a host of common oral health issues. Some of those issues are as common as tooth decay or gum disease. Others, like teeth grinding, affect some patients more than others. Regardless, all these issues are common enough—and destructive enough—that they should be addressed quickly and efficiently.

Oral Cancer Screenings

While most cases of oral cancer are linked to behaviors like tobacco use and excessive alcohol consumption, at least a quarter of cases occur in patients with none of the typical risk factors. What’s more, many cases aren’t diagnosed until the disease has already reached a well-advanced stage. With that in mind, we’re strong believers in the importance of routine oral cancer screenings. Diagnosing oral cancer early is the best way to give patients hope of a brighter future.

Sportsguards

If you or someone else in your family is an athlete, let Dr. Kovach talk to you about the importance of wearing a custom-made sportsguard while active. The majority of tooth loss incidents among patients under 25 are sports related, so protecting your family’s smiles with a comfortable, effective mouthguard is essential to oral health. Athletic mouthguards are available in local sporting goods stores, but the custom crafted sportsguards available in our practice have a more comfortable fit making patients more likely to wear the guard consistently.

Nightguards

If teeth grinding is ruining your smile and sense of health and wellbeing, a custom-made nightguard will help you protect teeth and enjoy relief from your symptoms. Bruxism, teeth grinding and clenching, is one of the most difficult to diagnose oral health concerns because patients typically grind and clench while they sleep. This unconscious habit is difficult to break, but a comfortable, convenient nightguard allows patients to rest easy. Some warning signs that indicate patients may be suffering from bruxism include teeth that appear worn (chips, cracks, reduced length), headaches, neck pain, or jaw pain especially upon waking, and frequent awakening during sleep. If you notice any of these warning signs, let our team know right away.

Better Care with Digital X-Rays

To accurately diagnose your needs, Dr. Kovach needs to know as much as possible about your smile. One way she can gather this valuable information is with a visual exam. But a visual exam alone will only tell us so much. To accurately grasp your needs, we need to see more. That’s where X-rays come in.

For decades, dentists have been using X-rays to see what the naked eye alone couldn’t. However, the images captured by a traditional X-ray machine had to be developed with harmful chemicals and then stored somewhere in case they were needed later on.

Thankfully, technology has changed this. With digital radiography, there’s nothing to develop at all. Instead, images are ready instantaneously and viewable on a nearby monitor. What’s more, they can even be annotated to make explaining treatment even easier.

With digital radiography there’s no need to physically store images anywhere. Instead, they can be saved to our computer, where we can easily access them later.

The benefits of digital radiography don’t stop there. The images captured are also far more detailed than those captured with traditional radiography. The process exposes patients to as much as 90 percent less radiation, making it a much safer option.