Pediatric Dentist Portland & Oregon City » teeth

Baby Juice Bottles

Mark Mutschler — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:11:55 +0000

Parents who come into my Portland, Oregon pediatric dental practice often tell me, “My baby loves juice and I just cannot take it away, so I water it down.” These parents love their babies and want them to have all the good things in life. Juice is sweet and delicious and healthy too. Right? Fruit [...]

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Baby Juice Bottles

Treating Portland Pulps & Root Canals

Mark Mutschler — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 00:05:35 +0000

“Root canal? Ouch!” That is what most of my Portland patients tell me, but luckily root canal treatments take away toothaches to make you feel better. Usually dentists prefer to treat infected root canal pulps before they start to hurt because this is the most comfortable way to go. Waiting for a tooth to hurt [...]

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Treating Portland Pulps & Root Canals

Gum Infections in Portland

Mark Mutschler — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:59:21 +0000

A four year old boy from Portland came in with his mother, complaining of swelling around his baby molar. When I looked at it, I noticed that there was an infection around the last molar, next to where the permanent tooth develops. Since it could be either an infection of the tooth that spread to [...]

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Gum Infections in Portland

Flossing Braces

Mark Mutschler — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:48:53 +0000

Keeping braces clean is so important to moving teeth that it bears repeating. Keeping braces clean is so important to moving teeth. Why is it important you ask? To completely correct a badly positioned tooth, the tooth must slide the brace along the wire in the brace only a few millimeters. That is NOT very [...]

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Flossing Braces

Tears & Fears

Mark Mutschler — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:59:34 +0000

As a pediatric dentist, I specialize in children and special needs patients. Nevertheless, a large part of my job is overcoming parental fears. Parents have an incredible influence on their children; both positively and negatively. Kids are so tuned into parental non-verbal communication that even if a mother does not say anything negative about an [...]

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Tears & Fears

Tartar or Calculus

Mark Mutschler — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:27:57 +0000

You know that hard stuff that seems to grow on your teeth and that sounds screechy but makes your teeth feel nice and smooth when the dental hygienist scrapes it off? That is calculus (Greek for ‘small stone’) and also called tartar (but has nothing to do with the sauce). Tartar forms by many days [...]

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Tartar or Calculus

Filling Materials

Mark Mutschler — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:40:48 +0000

When a tooth gets a cavity it must be filled or it will continue to decay and get worse – even to the point of death. What kind of materials are available to fix holes in teeth? The most common material for about a century has been silver and copper mixed with mercury with a [...]

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Filling Materials

Molar Sealants

Mark Mutschler — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:49:03 +0000

Permanent molars usually have very deep pits, grooves, and fissures on the biting surface. These holes can be very difficult to keep clean so they are the most common place to get cavities. In the 1970′s dentists started cleaning out these pits and fissures then squirting runny plastic into the cleaned out grooves to keep [...]

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Molar Sealants

First Dental Visit

Mark Mutschler — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:39:23 +0000

Many parents are rightfully confused about when is the right time to start their children’s dental visits. Some Pediatricians say the first dentist visit should be about age two or three. Many general dentists have difficulty managing young children so they ask parents to bring them in after age three. The American Academy of Pediatric [...]

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First Dental Visit

Tooth Pain

Mark Mutschler — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:32:25 +0000

A toothache is one of the most painful experiences in life. It has been compared with severe back pain and even childbirth. Although there are many potential causes of toothache, the most common cause is a cavity that infects the pulp inside a tooth and that infection spreads throughout the tooth and into the surrounding [...]

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Tooth Pain