Deciding on Your Dental Goals is the First Step to Achieving Them
One of the things we’ve found about our patients is that when they come into our office, they often don’t know what they’re trying to achieve with dental treatments. Most come in with a vague sense that they’re unhappy with their current oral health and/or appearance of their teeth. But what the ultimate goal of treatment should be is a lot less clear.
That’s why a detailed discussion of your goals is an essential part of your first visit to the Center for Advanced Dentistry in Franklin, TN.
SEE YOUR TEETH FOR THE FIRST TIME
Before we begin talking about your goals, we want to make sure we both have the same understanding of the current state of your teeth and mouth. To do this, our New Patient Consultant will take detailed digital images of your teeth and put them up on the screen so that you can see your teeth the way she sees them. Cosmetic dentist Dr. Forbes has always used magnification when treating his patients, so he’s used to seeing teeth at this scale, but for many people, this is an eye-opener.
You think you know your teeth, but you’ve only really been looking at them in the mirror, so you haven’t gotten a real close-up look at what’s going on in your mouth. But this is critical to establishing your goals. Not only does this allow you to see the current problems, but it helps you to understand how new problems may be developing and what might be done to head them off.
LISTENING, LEARNING, AND PLANNING
Next, Dr. Forbes will listen to your experience and your concerns. He’ll want to know what problems you’ve experienced and why they made you decide to come into our office. We’ll want to know about your previous dental experiences and why you feel you might need a change.
Then Dr. Forbes will help connect your experience with what you’re seeing on the screen. You’ll understand what, exactly is giving you trouble and how it can be solved.
Finally, Dr. Forbes will discuss potential goals with you. We’ll want to establish both short-term goals and long-term goals. Short term goals will typically resolve everything that brought you in. We can eliminate pain, straighten your teeth, give you a smile makeover, or treat your TMJ.
If short-term goals take care of all that, you might wonder why we need to make long-term goals. We don’t want to get into a situation where we solve one problem, then another one crops up. A long-term goal helps keep us on track to ensure your oral health and beauty now and in the long run.
Your long-term goals may be, for example, keeping your teeth for life. Or, maybe that’s not realistic given your current oral health, so instead we’re looking at managing tooth loss and planning dental implants so that you can always have a full set of functional, pain-free teeth at any given time.Or maybe you’re concerned about maintaining your youthful appearance for decades to come.
ARE YOU READY TO GET THE BEST SMILE OF YOUR LIFE?
If you are unhappy with the health or beauty of your smile, we can help. We can also help you decide not only what you want to get away from, but what you’re working toward.
To get started developing your dental goals, please call (615) 383-6787 today for an appointment with Dr. Mckinnon Forbes at the Center for Advanced Dentistry in Franklin, TN.
