The neuromuscular approach has been a great benefit to both myself and to my patients that come in in pain, and there are many patients that are out there with TMJ problems, with neck pain, shoulder pain. Many of the symptoms that result from a bad bite. And with the neuromuscular approach which is different than a conventional approach we can go ahead and find the problems and treat them very conventionally and get people out of pain in a hurry. And it’s a very nice approach that I taught by LVI again the premiere postgraduate study where you can learn cutting edge dentistry, and this is truly cutting edge dentistry, and changes lives, it truly it changes lives.
TMJ is an acronym for tempero mandibular joint, which is a joint that people are well aware of because many people have problems with it. They are in pain either upon opening or on closing. Some people are in constant pain. But it also produces many other problems that people have to deal with. TMJ pain can be related to headache, shoulder pain, neck pain. TMJ pain is a real thing that many many people have whether they’re stressed, whether they’ve had some trauma over the years. There are a plethora of reasons why people experience TMJ pain, but it can be treated. TMJ problems have been treated over the years with many many different types of approaches. I find at Aesthetic Dental Care that we can go ahead and treat people fairly predictably and successfully with the neuromuscular approach.
TMJ problems can be very debilitating. Those people with true TMJ problems are in pain. They’re in pain 24 hours a day. Their life is compromised, and it can overwhelm them. So in order to really help these people you have to identify what the problems are and you have to have some kind of resolve for them. And with the neuromuscular approach we can go ahead and deliver care that will change their lives.
Some people have one or two symptoms and some people have many of the symptoms of TMJ pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, headache pain, migraines, facial pain. People have an assortment of things such as ringing in the ears, ear congestion, ear pain. There are lots of these things that people can all of a sudden put together. Yeah I do have that pain and I do have that pain. And they put it together and they have been to many different sources, whether the neurologist or internist or people that they’ve attempted to seek help for and they’ve gone through MRIs and CAT scans and there are many people out there looking for treatments and if one is trained in neuromuscular dentistry and we are at Aesthetic Dental Care then frequently they can be helped in a big way.
Diagnosing TMJ pain is something that we have case 7 instrument for. And it allows us to do electromyography, it allows us to do muscle tracking, it allows us to go ahead and find where people are having the problems, in which muscles, and we can then go ahead and take a bite and we can recreate a position of comfort that we can scientifically find on our case 7, on our computer program. Very different than conventional dentistry of making a night guard that’s made arbitrarily and here’s a piece of plastic and put this in and that’ll change things. Frequently we find that that procedure not only doesn’t help but causes more pain. The more neuromuscular dentistry works is it allows us to scientifically find a patient’s most comfortable muscle level and allows us to recreate that position of comfort scientifically so that we can go ahead and monitor it on the computer and see by electromyography where that level of comfort is. There’s no other system that allows you to do that, and this is what allows neuromuscular dentistry to be different than conventional dentistry. And it can change people’s lives.
Once we diagnose the TMJ problem, once we go ahead and figure out what’s going on, then we can go ahead and make an appliance known as an orthotic, whether it’s a removable or a fixed orthotic, but we can make something that we can go ahead based on the scientific readings of the computer determine where the person’s most comfortable position is and it’s kind of like taking a stone out of a shoe. When someone’s walking around, they have a little pebble in their shoe, if you take that stone out and find the most comfortable level all of a sudden it’s life changing, and that’s what neuromuscular dentistry allows us to do. So we can go ahead and make an orthotic, we can make a removable or a fixed, and that’s phase 1. Once we have somebody comfortable in phase 1 then we can go ahead and move onto phase 2 which is more definitive treatment.
At Aesthetic Dental Care of New Jersey it’s extremely critical for us to stay current because things have changed so much over the past few years that if you don’t stay current you get left behind. And the techniques that we have today and the materials that we have today are far better than what we used even 5 or 10 years ago. So staying current really is the most important thing for us here.
We stay current by taking a lot of continuing education courses. We take them at LVI which is the premiere leading postured center for education in the country. We take courses all over actually and we maintain the cutting edge by getting this technology in and by using it and learning how to use it and getting proficient at it.
We now have a CEREC machine which allows us to go ahead and make a crown or make an inlay on the same day of service as we’re going ahead and preparing the teeth. So that reduces the number of visits, that reduces putting temporaries in. People have temporaries in they frequently call and well, I lost one or it fell out. Here we go ahead and we can repair the tooth and we can go ahead and make the crown or the porcelain on lay right away and cement it or bond it in that same day. Very helpful for the sedation patients and we want to do as much work as possible in as little time and we want to go ahead and limit the number of visits. Or from people that come from out of town, from out of the area, who don’t want to make so many trips, we can go ahead and prepare the teeth, we don’t have to send it to the laboratory, we can do it right here and we can get it done and inserted the same day.
CEREC is a great tool for us because it allows us to go ahead and take a virtual impression of a tooth that we’re preparing for, for example, a crown or for an onlay, and instead of some people being very fearful of the impression that they’re going to go ahead and swallow the material or gag on it this is a camera that allows us to take a virtual impression, and from that virtual impression we can design the porcelain and then send it to the milling machine at the end of the hallway and it’s all prepared, all done at the same time in our office right here in Fairfield. So there’s no second visit, there’s no coming back two weeks later having more anesthetic put in, taking the temporary off and putting the crown in. It’s all done in one visit and again very beneficial for those having sedation because we can accomplish much more in fewer visits.
