Renew Your Smile with Dental Restorations in National City
Missing, damaged, or infected teeth not only impact daily speaking, chewing, and overall quality of life, but these concerns can also affect your oral health just as much as your self-confidence. At our National City dental office, Dr. Bernardita N. Lizan provides long-lasting solutions for repairing, rebuilding and saving teeth that are as tailored as they are comprehensive.
From your initial consultation to affixing your final restoration, our services allow our dentist to rejuvenate smiles with results that are aesthetically-pleasing and designed to last a lifetime. Contact Dr. Lizan and her team to schedule your restoration consultation today!
CALL US: (619) 477-7570 REQUEST APPOINTMENT
Our Available Treatments for Smile Restoration
Whether you’re visiting our office to repair minor chips and cracks or you require complete smile replacement, our National City team has you covered.
We provide a full range of restorative dentistry services including:
Why We Use Prime Materials for Your Restorations
If you need quick repair with a filling after treating tooth decay or are looking to address tooth pain with root canal therapy, Dr. Lizan can ensure reliable treatments that only utilize the highest quality of natural-looking and body-safe materials.
Our dentist works with trusted dental labs and has for many years. This allows both yourself and Dr. Lizan to have complete control throughout the fabrication process, ensuring the shape, shade, and quality aligns perfectly with your needs.
Why Opt for Composite and Porcelain Over Metal Restorations?
Amalgam (metal) fillings were once the most popular choice for repairing damaged enamel from cavities and decay. For a variety of reasons, including traces of mercury, metal fillings are now much less popular. Mercury is one of amalgam filling's primary components. Although the amounts are small, mercury is toxic in higher levels and can also irritate the teeth, gums, and other soft tissues of sensitive patients.
Aesthetic restorations, such as porcelain crowns, inlays, onlays, and composite fillings do not have any metal or mercury. These metal-free alternatives are made of natural-looking and body-safe materials that provide safe and customizable treatment.
White Fillings and Porcelain Inlays and Onlays for Discreet Tooth Repair
Minor chips, cracks, and fractures can develop into larger amounts of damage if not appropriately treated, leaving your smile open to possible infection and the need for more extensive treatment. Filling cavities, sealing spaces of removed decay, and repairing enamel can help prevent further damage where bacteria like to build up.
White Fillings
White Fillings, otherwise known as composite fillings, are a type of restoration that is used to literally fill the areas of the tooth where decay was removed by our dentist. Fillings can be also used to repair minor chips, cracks, and fractures in the enamel due to wear and other damage, typically from clenching or grinding.
Porcelain Inlays
Porcelain Inlays are made outside of the mouth as a single, solid piece of porcelain. These aesthetic restorations are designed to provide a perfect fit in the spaces where damage or moderate decay has left the enamel exposed or missing.
Porcelain Onlays
Porcelain Onlays also fit inside the tooth, but instead, extend to the chewing surfaces of a back tooth, or molar, to replace one or more damaged cusps. Like our inlays, our onlays are crafted from beautiful and durable porcelain, which fits perfectly to your tooth.
Using the Versatility of Porcelain Crowns to Renew Your Smile
Dental crowns are prosthetic restorations that are designed to look, feel, and act exactly as a natural, healthy tooth. Crowns can encompass a severely-damaged or weakened tooth, or they can be affixed to a dental implant post for replacing a single missing tooth.
In addition to their functional and aesthetic benefits, crowns can address a large variety of dental health issues. It is their versatility that helps make them a popular treatment amongst dental care professionals and patients alike.
Our dental crowns allow Dr. Lizan to:
- Strengthen weak or worn enamel
- Completely replace a single missing tooth with an implant
- Protect a treated tooth after performing root canal therapy
- Repair dental chips, cracks, and other damage
- Restore a tooth’s natural appearance
What to Expect when Getting a Crown
First, our dentist takes digital impressions of the tooth in question to gain precise details of why the tooth needs a crown. To ensure your crown is made to mimic your neighboring teeth, these digital impressions are sent to a trusted lab. During this time, our dentist provides you with a temporary crown to protect your tooth.
When your new crown is ready, we will invite you back to our National City office to place your restoration. A body-safe dental cement is used to help ensure your crown is affixed to your tooth permanently. Once dried, you can enjoy your new crown confidently, without worry.
What Are My Options for Replacing Missing Teeth?
At the dental office of Bernardita N. Lizan, DMD, we proudly provide the following solutions for restoring severely damaged or otherwise missing teeth:
Dental Implants – Once surgically placed in the jaw, these titanium posts act as artificial tooth roots where missing teeth once were. They are accepted by the body, allowing them to fuse with living tissue and bone, providing a permanent anchor for your crown, bridge, or denture restoration.
Fixed Bridges – These appliances are often ideal for restoring one to several missing teeth in a row. Bridges can either be held in place by two hollow crowns that use natural, neighboring teeth to help bridge the gap, or they can be supported by dental implants. Bridges are reliable restorations for helping to restore jawbone function and reestablishing a proper bite.
Partial Dentures – If multiple teeth need replacing in your smile, a partial denture can be used to replace several to many lost teeth all at once. These lifelike appliances are often supported by metal clasps attached to neighboring teeth.
Full Dentures – If you’re already missing all the teeth in your smile, full dentures can restore all your teeth completely. Dentures can either utilize adhesives, natural suction, or four-to-eight implants for lasting security. Our denture appliances are fabricated to feel, function, and appear just like your natural smile while encouraging a comfortable fit.
What are Dental Implants and How Do They Work?
Since their first accidental discovery in the early 1950s, titanium dental implants have been considered the gold standard for replacing teeth from medical and dental professionals worldwide. As briefly stated above, modern dental implants consist of titanium posts that serve as artificial tooth roots once surgically inserted in the jaw.
Once placed, natural tissue and bone begin to grow around the post in a fusing process known as osseointegration. This is possible because the titanium used to create the implant post is biocompatible, meaning the body accepts it and therefore allows the dental implant to become a part of the jawbone.
Dental implants consist of three parts:
- The titanium post
- The abutment (tiny connecting piece)
- The restoration
When these three pieces of a dental implant come together, they completely replace the entire structure of a missing tooth from the root to the crown.
Helping You Save Your Smile with Root Canal Therapy
If you're experiencing tooth sensitivity or pain that is debilitating, chances are high that an infection has reached the inner pulp of your tooth and you will need root canal therapy. Dr. Lizan provides root canal therapy to save as much as your natural tooth as possible when dental damage and infection have jeopardized your smile.
Why Try to Save an Infected Tooth?
If a tooth can be saved, performing a root canal is our preferred method. Keeping your natural tooth means the chances for restoring your dental and oral health more quickly without the need for more extensive treatments.
Typically, a tooth must be extracted only if the damage or infection is extensive enough that it compromises overall oral health, or if there is not enough tooth structure to save.
What Does Having a Root Canal Involve?
During a root canal procedure, the infected nerves, blood vessels, and tissues, also known as the pulp, are removed from the pulp chamber (inner tooth). The chamber is cleaned and filled with an anti-bacterial material for added protection.
A temporary crown is placed over the treated tooth while your custom crown is being made. After about two weeks, you will come back to our office, and Dr. Lizan will place your crown. To ensure your new restorations matches your natural smile, our dentist will adjust your crown to perfectly fit your bite and feel comfortable.
Restore Your Smile to Its Optimal Health and Function Today!
Dr. Bernardita N. Lizan and her team proudly serve the San Diego County communities with beautiful, durable dental prosthetics at our National City office. Don’t let the impact of dental damage, infection, or tooth loss hinder your smile any longer! Contact the dental practice of Bernardita N. Lizan, DMD, to schedule your appointment today!
CALL US: (619) 477-7570 REQUEST APPOINTMENT