Gorrell Smiles

Technology

Technology touches just about every area of our lives, including dentistry. Dr. Brent Gorrell is committed to staying at the forefront of modern dentistry and embraces technology that improves your care and your comfort.

Digital dental technology has value because it streamlines and improves the comfort of many dental procedures. Equally importantly, it enhances our ability to provide highly accurate diagnoses that result in favorable long-term outcomes.

We’re pleased to offer a wealth of state-of-the-art technology at our Mountain View, CA dental office. Please take a few minutes to see how it all works together to provide you with a dental experience that’s exceptional in every way.

Digital X-Rays

When digital x-ray technology first became available around 20 years ago, dentists immediately saw the advantages they offered compared to film x-rays. For one thing, traditional film x-rays required harsh chemicals to process. Since modern x-ray images are digital, we eliminate the need for chemicals in our office.

Another problem with film x-rays was the amount of radiation they produced. This was a legitimate concern, and dentists were pleased to be able to offer their patients an option for taking x-ray images that reduced their exposure by as much as 70 percent.

Digital x-rays make it easy for our dentists to find problems like cavities in their earliest stages. Treating problems when they’re small means we can provide more conservative, affordable treatments and better protect your oral health.

Since we can share the digital images with you on your chairside monitor, we can point out areas of concern so you can understand why treatment is necessary. We save your digital x-ray images to your patient record so we can access them easily to monitor conditions or to send to insurance companies or specialists.

Digital Impressions

If you have ever had a crown or bridge placed, you probably remember having impressions taken. You had to bite down on a bulky metal tray filled with impression material and fight your gag reflex while you waited for it to set. If you were lucky, the impression was usable the first time; if not, you had to sit for the entire process again.

Digital impressions at our Mountain View, CA dental office do away with the entire messy and uncomfortable process. Taking dental impressions today is as easy as passing a handheld digital scanner over your teeth. Digital impressions are capable of capturing 3-D virtual images that are used with CAD/CAM technology like CEREC and allows us to precisely fit dental crowns, veneers, inlays, and onlays.

Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT)

Many dental procedures we offer at Gorrell Smiles require a more comprehensive view of your mouth than a single x-ray can provide. These procedures include dental implant placement, orthodontic treatment, root canals, and tooth extractions.

That’s when Dr. Brent Gorrell and his associates turn to technology like 3-D cone beam imaging technology or CBCT (Cone Beam Computed Tomography). These 3-D images provide invaluable information and show us the location of dental structures, including soft tissues, nerve pathways, sinuses, and bone in a single scan. This information is especially helpful when planning the precise placement of dental implants. We also use CBCT to detect pathology of your jaw bones and the surrounding structures.

CEREC Same-Visit Dental Crowns

Need a dental crown in a hurry? At Gorrell Smiles, we offer the convenience of CEREC crowns that are created right here at our Mountain View, CA dental office in a single appointment.

The wait for traditional crowns fabricated at a custom dental lab can be as long as two weeks. Preparing for lab-fabricated dental crowns also involves multiple visits, multiple injections, uncomfortable impressions, and the inconvenience of a temporary crown.

There is a better way! Dr. Gorrell and our team are pleased to offer the convenience of CEREC dental crowns. CEREC stands for Chairside Economical Restorations of Esthetic Ceramics. What this means is that we perform the entire procedure from planning and design to the placement of your new crown on your tooth during a single appointment.

We take digital impressions that we use with CAD/CAM technology to design your new dental crown. We send the specifications to a 3-D printer in our office that fabricates your crown from a block of ceramic material. When it’s ready, we’ll check the crown for fit and bond it securely to your tooth, and the entire process takes under two hours.

Intraoral Cameras

Have you ever sat through a dental exam and wondered what it is that your dentist sees when they look in your mouth? With digital intraoral cameras, there’s no more mystery because you can see exactly what we see.

Seeing is believing, and when you can visualize a problem, you can better understand why treatment is necessary and how it will benefit you. As we pass the small handheld camera over your teeth, the images appear in real-time on your chairside monitor. You become an active participant in your oral health care, which gives you the confidence to make informed decisions about your treatment.

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