How Much Work Can I Have Done In One Dental Appointment?

I haven’t been to the dentist for years because of finances. I’ve finally gotten a better job WITH dental insurance. I cannot wait to get caught up with my oral health. What is the most amount of work that I can get done at each appointment? I want to get caught up as much as possible. Here’s what I’m looking at:

Six root canals
Quite a few cavities
Repair a chipped tooth
My teeth should be whitened

Brooke

Dear Brooke,

Congratulations on the new job and the dental insurance. That’s fantastic.

Each dentist varies in how much work they are willing to do at each appointment. That being said, you will find that dentists who offer sedation options will likely be willing to do more at each appointment than one who does not. This is because if you use dental sedation, then you’ll be much more relaxed and able to tolerate more time in the dental chair. In fact, if you use oral conscious sedation, you’ll be able to sleep through the entire appointment if you want to.

You might be able to do a four hour appointment if your dentist is okay with that. If your root canals are on front teeth than a good general dentist can do all of them fairly quickly. If you are needing them on molars, those might be better off done by an endodontist, which is a root canal specialist. While a general dentist can take between one and a half to two hours to do a root canal on a molar, a specialist can do them in just an hour.

The chipped tooth can be repaired with either dental bonding or a porcelain veneer. You will want to do the teeth whitening before you do the chip repair or get any dental crowns. This way they can match your restorations and repairs to the white color you want. If you whiten after that, then your teeth will whiten but not the restorations. With the root canals, you can do the whitening between the root canal treatment and the dental crown placement.

I’m excited for you to get the smile you want.

This blog is brought to you by Dr. Oksana Bailey, a female dentist in Draper, UT.