Your Modern Alternative To Oral Surgery
At Gallery Park Dental, we offer laser treatments that give you a safe option to treat soft tissues that shortens recovery time and provides excellent outcomes.
What Is Laser Dentistry?
For many years, treatment of gums and soft tissues required oral surgery with scalpels, sutures, and lengthy healing times. Modern dental technology now offers a less invasive and more comfortable option for treating a wide range of dental issues – laser dentistry!
Laser dentistry doesn't involve cutting into the gums but is more of a vaporizing process. As a result, there is very little blood and little to no discomfort. The laser sterilizes the soft tissues on contact, reducing the chance of infection at the treatment sites. Lasers also stimulate healing, which can drastically reduce your recovery times.
At Gallery Park Dental, the benefits laser dentistry offers are well worth the investment! These laser treatments for many soft tissue problems, including frenectomies, gingivectomies, and even painful canker sores, using Biolase soft tissue lasers.
Laser Dentistry Procedures
Laser Frenectomies
A frenectomy is a procedure to remove the muscle attachment, or frenum, either between the upper lips and the gums or below the tongue. The condition of having an abnormal tongue frenulum, often referred to as "tongue-tied," can cause speech problems and difficulty eating, as well as lead to bite deformity.
A frenectomy can correct this problem, allowing patients to speak and swallow normally, all while preserving a proper bite or stopping the progression of a deforming bite.
Labial frenectomy, or removal of the frenum between the upper lips and gum, is often necessary to create a better fit for dentures. It can also be performed to fix problems where the frenum is too short and thick, pulling at the gums when the lips move and leading to separation of the gums from the teeth or gaps between the front teeth.
Traditionally, frenectomies required incisions with a scalpel, sutures, and a lengthy healing time. Laser frenectomies offer advantages in all these areas. They are quick, require no sutures, are more comfortable during the healing process, and heal much quicker than a traditional frenectomy.
Gingivectomy
Gums can become overgrown due to genetics, certain medications, or other causes. These overgrown gum tissues can interfere with proper chewing and speaking, cause difficulties with oral care techniques, and create an unwanted appearance, making the teeth look too short and uneven.
Gum disease can also cause damage to the tender gums, creating loose "pockets" between the teeth and gums that turn into a breeding ground for bacteria.
To treat these gum problems, a gingivectomy is performed. Gingivectomies can be used to remove excess gum tissue or to tighten up the loose gum pockets when gum disease has progressed beyond being treatable with medications and the non-surgical procedure, scaling, and root planing.
At Gallery Park Dental, we use laser dentistry to perform safe, more comfortable gingivectomies on our patients, offering better outcomes and shorter healing times than traditional gum surgery.
Canker Sores (Aphthous Ulcer)
Canker sores can be painful and uncomfortable, and for a long time, they have been difficult to treat. However, with laser technology, we can offer safe, fast treatment in our Glenview dental office, reducing healing times for these painful and frustrating sores.
Laser treatment of soft tissue sores such as cankers is done by heating the sore, killing the virus causing the canker with little to no discomfort for patients. The treatment can be done in as little as 15 minutes, and most patients experience immediate relief after treatment.
