Smile Protection
- Hygiene care & dietary guidance
- Dental exams
- X-rays
- Infant care
- Sealants
- Xylitol therapies
- Fluoride varnishes & products
- Cavity detection laser
- Bacterial control therapies
- Mouth guards
Fun.
We are most successful when your child is able to maintain a low cavity-risk status and avoid decay. If we work together, your child may never need a filling. Our dental office will simply be a place to play cool video games and meet nice people. We want this to be your child’s experience. Its why we do what we do. We want all of our patients to end childhood with happy dental memories. It is the reason we see infants and their parents.
Fast.
Our Smile Check-ups typically take less than an hour. If your child’s dental experience is limited to smile protection, your child will only have to visit us twice a year. That way we can continue to keep your child low risk for cavities and keep dentistry fun, fast, and affordable.
Affordable.
Our unique approach to cavity prevention should give you the tools to effectively care for your family's smile, give your child happy dental appointments, and minimize the cost of dentistry over your child's lifetime. Prevention is the most affordable dentistry.
Back to the top
Smile Repair
- Aesthetic fillings
- Extractions
- Space maintainers
- Crowns
- Nerve treatments
Minimal.
Dr. Gary practices minimally invasive dentistry, so his techniques preserve as much sound tooth structure as possible. By using X-rays and dental lasers during your child's Smile Check-ups, decay can be detected before extensive damage occurs. Since the natural tooth structure and material is superior to anything manmade, keeping as much healthy tooth as possible is preferable for better tooth function and duration. Smaller fillings have greater longevity too.
Comfortable.
Anesthetic needles and drills can be scary for kids, so our restorative practices give your child the most comfort possible. We are trained to handle very young children from a behavioral standpoint as well as a clinical one. Dr. Gary has received training and experienced success using particular techniques to manage certain behavioral challenges without any medication. All our staff members enjoy working with children and are skilled in providing compassion while accomplishing the needed treatment.
While nitrous oxide works effectively for our little patients with mild to moderate anxiety, parents appreciate the alternatives available when a more powerful sedation is required for providing treatment. Dr. Gary offers in-office conscious sedation and IV sedation at the Orange Park Surgery Center. With conscious sedation, your child will drink some medicine, making him/her sleepy. Your child will maintain his/her own airway and be conscious the entire time. In hospital sedation, children are put under general anesthesia and a tube is placed to maintain the airway. Most parents opt for conscious sedation as a successful and cost effective approach to their child's dental treatment. We feel it is important that parents are given all possible options for their child's care.
Finally, do not underestimate the power of the television to take your child's mind off their dental work!
Future-Minded.
Often we use fillings that release fluoride to keep cavities from occurring on nearby teeth and grooves. We recommend and provide treatment with the your child's future smile in mind. The better we can restore your child to good oral health today, the brighter your child's smile will be tomorrow. We encourage parents to think of baby teeth as, training wheels, and have their child's oral health under control and effortlessly maintained by the time the adult teeth erupt.
Skilled.
Hand skills, innate ability, and attention to detail play significant roles in the quality treatment a dentist provides. Dr. Gary has the skills necessary to perform high quality dentistry on your children. This ability affects the failure rate and aesthetic nature of the fillings they receive. Better dentistry today means less cost and less invasive dental treatment for your child tomorrow.
Cost-Effective.
We always offer treatment plans that take into consideration you and your child's health needs, personal objectives, and payment ability. Our goal is to eliminate the existing decay, reduce cavity-causing bacteria, and ensure proper growth and development, and we will never compromise our level of care. However, we work with our parents to prioritize treatment and plan strategically when needed.
Back to the top
Smile Function & Perfection
- Myofunctional (muscle-function) training
- Orthodontic appliances
- Two-Phase orthodontics
- Traditional orthodontics
- Whitening
Progressive.
Orthodontists have traditionally waited until all the permanent teeth erupt, around 12 or 13, to start braces. As pediatric dentists focused on the growth and development of your child, we ONLY recommend starting this late when growth is proceeding normally and only minor tooth straightening is necessary. Leaving a more serious malocclusion untreated until all of the permanent teeth erupt could result in a jaw discrepancy too severe to achieve an ideal result even when the teeth are straight.
Comprehensive.
As we evaluate your child's growth and development at each Smile Check-up, we are looking at how your child's upper and lower jaws are growing.
- Is there a front to back problem where the upper/lower is too long or too short?
- Is there a side to side problem where either jaw is too narrow or too wide?
- Is there an up and down problem where the upper teeth cover too much of the lower teeth or they do not meet at all (open bite)?
- Are there breathing problems or habits that can disrupt normal growth patterns of the face and jaws?
Interceptive.
If children over 4 years of age show signs of these orthodontic problems, we may recommend an early interceptive phase of orthodontics. During this phase, we use orthodontic appliances and muscle awareness training to direct your child's rapid growth toward an ideal relationship between the upper and lower jaws. Once corrected, there is an intermediate retention period, and if necessary, a second phase of orthodontics is resumed in the teenage years to correct any minor crowding of the permanent teeth now in place. Read more...
Picture-Perfect.
Often our teenagers, especially after braces, will desire whiter teeth. We offer a range of products to help achieve this goal, from Crest professional white strips to custom made trays.
Back to the top
Special Smiles
We have a long tradition of helping children and adults in our community with special needs. Our business staff is extremely knowledgeable about the many financial programs available to special needs children and adults. Our clinical staff is experienced at giving that extra level of care these patients require.
Please call our office at 505-2010 if you have any specific questions or concerns regarding our ability to handle your child's challenges. We think you will be pleasantly surprised to learn how successful we have been with our special patients.