Family & General Dentistry in Mississauga

A family dentist is like having a family physician. Maintaining good oral health is an essential part of maintaining your overall health. Not having a family dentist is like not having a family physician. Having good teeth and gums maintains good quality of life for the entire family. At Bristol Dental Clinic, a family with regular dental visits would only have regular scaling and routine check-ups (we call them an ideal dental patient). Similar to regular physician check-ups and blood test, we recommend that the entire family visit your family dentist for routine check-ups because the family physician does not check your mouth (different from checking the throat) and the teeth. At Bristol Dental Clinic, we plan such visits so you get your scaling and check-up are done at the same visit. At such visits, your family dentist gets a chance to identify potential problems like a cavity, infection, poor gums, poor bite etc. at an early stage and recommend timely corrective action. We have different structured programs to check children, teenagers, adults, seniors and people with special health conditions. These visits are also a great opportunity to connect with the dental office, your family dentist and staff to decide if you can trust the office and the dentist with your dental treatments. Finally, the practice philioshy followed by the dentist and the dental office could be an important criteria in choosing the family dentist.

The amount of time spent with the patient, quality of treatment provided, patient education, quality of the proposed treatment plan, and the philosophy of the practice are the key determinants for choosing a family dental office. At Bristol Dental Clinic, we as health care providers strive to care for you and your mouth. Family dentistry, as the name suggests, is providing compassionate dental services to people of all age groups. Family dentistry at Bristol Dental Clinic permits you to continue seeing the same dentist or a group of dentists for a lifetime providing the same standard of care. While the benefits of family dentistry are multi-faceted, one could categorize the benefits into either better dental health or better cost management. Having good teeth and gums maintains good quality of life for the entire family. Also, unlike to the popular belief that dental visits are expensive, it is the neglect of dental care that becomes expensive. At Bristol Dental Clinic, the family dentist maintain dental records after every visit starting with the new patient exam. These records contain pertinent medical and non-medical information needed to treat every family member and aid the family dentist to review the treatment history and the provide recommendations. You will get ample opportunities to develop a relationship, understand your teeth and your gums condition, the cost involved in your treatment etc. through our diagnosis and treatment methodology, patient education systems, preventative and conservative treatment philosophy, and advance notification of any adverse dental conditions. If required, your family dentist will refer you to other dentists or specialists in our office for further consultation and treatment, whether it be smile makeovers or orthodontic intervention, wisdom teeth extraction, oral pathology, oral cancer screening or a root canal.

The Ontario Dental Association recommends that parents visit the dentist with their toddlers the moment they start getting their teeth. This allows for the dentist to provide nutritional counseling to parents and kids and familiarize themselves with the dental office. Children take time to develop trust and bonding. There is no such right time for a dental check-up. Typically, we encourage parents to get their children for regular visits by the time they are 4 years old. Nevertheless, if parents have any specific concern, we would recommend getting the children for a check-up immediately irrespective of their age.

Annual or complete examination are different from routine recall check-ups. When patients come to Bristol Dental Clinic for the first time, we do a complete exam often called a New Patient Exam which focus on about 30 check points, a set of small x-rays, a panoramic x-rays if needed, about 8-10 intra-oral camera pictures, patient education, future check points and a detailed treatment plan discussion. This takes about 70 minutes for an adult and about 40 minutes for a child. No treatment is done at this visit but all the time is spent in the diagnosis, treatment planning, and treatment phasing and cost estimation. The observations from the new patient exam makes a baseline for our patient for future check-ups and treatments. We don't recommend annual complete checks unless there has been a significant change in the dental or medical condition during the past few months. An ideal comprehensive check would be once every 3-5 years. A routine recall check-up is a limited check-up by the family dentists once every 6 - 9 months when the patient is in for their 3 or 4 month scaling. Based on the history of the patient, the dentist will check key areas to ensure the patient is maintaining good oral health and provide intervention if required.

No family dental treatment at Bristol dental Clinic are so expensive that we ever needed to provide a payment plan. Besides, the treatments are prioritized and done in phases to spread the cost over the active period of the treatment phase. There are however other treatments like orthodontics where we give interest free payment plans.