Have you ever wondered how a complex dental treatment plan is determined?

People can have problems with crooked teeth, jaw problems (including size and shape), broken and cracked teeth, dead teeth, gum problems and concerns about smile appearance. With any combination of these concerns deciding on the ideal treatment plan can be quite involved and requires the coordinated input of your family dentist as well as a number of specialist dentists i.e. a team approach to dental planning and treatment.

Team-Approach

A specialist orthodontist frequently has an important role in these complex dental treatments.

Complex dentistry usually starts with your family dentist taking care of any decay, very importantly your gums need to be healthy, sometimes teeth require root canal therapy or removal (including wisdom teeth) and often teeth need to be straightened with orthodontic treatment prior to crown restorative treatment with or without implants.

Also if the jaws are the wrong size and shape to satisfactorily align the teeth to give a great smile and nice profile, jaw surgery is sometimes required. This is achieved by a specialist maxillo-facial surgeon (oral surgeon).

Complex Dental Planning

Townsville Orthodontic Specialists along with all the dental specialists in Townsville meet weekly to discuss complex dental cases.

This type of case discussion meetings are quite rare in Australia due to time and geographic restraints in other towns and especially in capital cities. I feel very fortunate in Townsville that we have these planning meetings which have been held for approximately the past 35 years and believe they help very much in reaching the best treatment plans with the input of the many specialist dentists in Townsville. I believe that we are servicing Townsville and North Queensland towns very well and we pride ourselves with being involved in very good treatment outcomes.

Specialist orthodontists know when orthodontics would be helpful to be included in a complex dental treatment and when an alternative treatment mode will give a better outcome for a patient.

As well as these more complex treatments, a specialist orthodontist knows the optimal time for orthodontic treatment for children, teenagers and adults in order to:

• Create beautiful faces and confident smiles.
• Help children and adults who are self-conscious about their teeth to smile confidently and proudly.

I feel privileged to work with my professional colleagues and our fantastic staff and to work in a wonderful regional city with such a great community spirit. Specialist training in orthodontics was three long hard years (after five years of general dental training) and has allowed me to work in what is undoubtedly one of the best and most rewarding jobs in the world.

Dr Geoff Stanton, Orthodontist
Townsville Orthodontic Specialists