Blog

HANK: Once I stepped in the door here and met Mark Sweeney, I knew that I’d met the man that was going to fix my teeth for me. So that’s my original exposure to the company. I had 10 veneers done on the top and absolutely stunning. I told Dr. Sweeney when we originally came in, I said you know I want a Hollywood smile. Can you provide that for me? I want something that Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: Our final level of dealing with dental phobic patients is the dental anesthesiologist. We’re blessed in Austin to have two of them that will come to the office. Both of them are dentist and licensed dental anesthesiologists. So they’re able to utilize IV sedation just like the oral surgeons would do if they were taking wisdom teeth out and both of them are also able to take it a level beyond that if need be which is […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: A patient undergoing oral conscious sedation usually we give them enough medication that they’re able to take one the night before the appointment so they get a good night’s sleep. We usually schedule these appointments first thing in the morning, have the patient take another tablet an hour before their visit. If they follow that regimen, usually by the time they’re getting here, their significant other or spouse is having to help them get in the front […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: Thirty years ago in dental schools they taught us that 50% of the adult population in the United States never goes to a dentist unless they have a crisis event like a toothache that kept them up all night. I never understood that until the internet came along. It’s been a boom to my fearful patients many of whom were so fearful that they couldn’t even bring themselves to call and make an appointment and now they’re […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: I was first exposed to digital radiography in 1993. I heard about it. They were giving a course on it and there were only five dentists that showed up because nobody believed it would really work and that it was ready for primetime. At the 10:00 break that morning, I sat down and signed the order for it while the other four dentists stood behind me and watched me fill out the paperwork. It’s been one of […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: We have three different lasers in our office. One is used in our hygiene department to diagnose whether there’s decay in the tooth or not by penetrating the tooth with a laser beam and measuring how much tooth bounces back. Totally harmless. Very simple to do. If there’s decay into a tooth inside of a tooth to a degree that it needs to be restored, much of the light gets absorbed and so the digital reading on […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: The most exciting technology for me in dentistry right now is CEREC. It had been in the works for 20 years. It was developed by a dentist in Germany who was convinced that CatCam technology could be utilized in dentistry. It took them 20 years to develop the technology to a point where I was ready to utilize it in my office. But when three years ago they developed it to a point where you could make […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: I did my last silver filling, metal amalgam filling in 1995 and it opened up a whole new era in dentistry for me to be able to restore a tooth so that when I was done, it looked just like a regular tooth again. I don’t know how I lived with myself all those years of putting big metal fillings. I had them in my own mouth for 25 years, but what we understand now although that […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: Another exciting innovation in dentistry is dental implants. I was initially a little worried about them back 20 years ago when they first came out. They were a little Star Warsy for me. Now it’s something that we do everyday of the week. It’s a fairly straight forward thing to take a person with a missing tooth, have an implant placed and then put a restoration over that implant. It looks just like a natural tooth. Dental […]

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DR. MARK SWEENEY: Even on back teeth we can use all ceramic restorations now. There’s really very little need for metal to be involved in dentistry anymore. We almost everyday are making crowns to go on back chewing teeth, on the molars that are all ceramic restorations. The advantage then over porcelain to metal is rather than being cemented into place, they’re actually chemically bonded into place and they’re much more natural looking because they transmit light very similar to […]

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