Dr. Elizabeth Duling is a dentist in Owens Cross Roads, AL. She is passionate about providing the best dental care to her patients. Whether her patients need routine dental cleanings, emergency care, or treatment for the whole family, she is here to help. Dr. Duling specializes in providing dental services that immediately address current concerns to help prevent future dental complications. Taking care of your oral health can protect you from more dental health concerns like periodontal disease, tooth decay, and even tooth loss.
What is Preventative Dentistry?
Dr. Duling works with each of her patients to design custom treatment plans to prevent future dental problems. Preventative dentistry will stop cavities, enamel wear, gum disease, missing teeth, and other oral health issues. At routine dental visits in Dr. Duling’s office, she and her dental hygienists provide tooth cleanings, examinations, and screenings. Regular dental office visits allow us to find problems early.
As dental problems worsen, their solutions can become more intensive, complicated, and costly. We focus on patient education and disease prevention through routine exams, cleanings, and good oral hygiene.
Simplify Your Routine!
We also offer the convenience of family scheduling: our office can provide routine dental care for parents or caregivers and children at the same time, making it easy to keep everyone’s smile healthy.
Root Canals
Dr. Duling provides root canal treatment for both children and adults. You will need a root canal if there is an infection present in the inner chamber of a tooth. Although some patients may think that root canals are painful procedures, we provide oral conscious sedation and nitrous oxide for our patient’s comfort.
During root canal treatment, Dr. Duling removes the infected pulp, cleans out the inner tooth chamber, and then seals the tooth. She may provide patients with a dental crown to protect the tooth and ensure that it does not get re-infected.
General Dental Care
General dentistry can include routine dental treatments to care for dental trauma or solutions for dental fear or anxiety:
Emergency Dentistry
Contact our office if you have a dental emergency. We work to schedule dental appointments for all of our emergency patients as soon as possible. Some of the most common dental emergencies that we treat include toothaches, knocked-out teeth, and broken dental restorations. We treat dental trauma with cosmetic care, restorations, extractions, repairs, or infection removal.
Sedation Dentistry
We offer nitrous oxide and oral conscious sedation. These dental sedation methods help keep patients relaxed and comfortable during their procedures. We will administer nitrous oxide through a mask to make patients feel drowsy and peaceful. You can take oral conscious sedation before treatment to help reduce anxiety.
Patients with dental fear or anxiety benefit from dental sedation because they do not have to feel pain or be conscious during their treatment.
Tooth Extractions
Patients with severely decayed or damaged teeth often require a tooth extraction. We will need to remove impacted wisdom teeth. Also known as the “third molars”, your dentist will need to remove wisdom teeth if they are causing pain or causing overcrowding teeth. If we have to remove your teeth due to damage or infection, you can replace them with dental implants or implant restorations. It is important to replace these teeth to prevent the remaining natural teeth from shifting.
Sports Mouthguards
Sports mouthguards need to be worn during contact sports to protect teeth from injury, prevent tooth loss, and protect dental work from damage. Store-bought mouthguards may fall out because they do not conform to teeth. We use dental impressions to create a custom fit for our patients. With our sports mouthguards, patients don’t need to clench their teeth to keep their mouthguards from falling out during their game.
Family Dentistry
Dr. Duling is a family dentist that accepts patients of all ages to her Owens Cross Roads office. Along with her dental team, Dr. Duling can help you care for your child’s primary or baby teeth. She will help recommend the right care for your child in their stage of life. Keeping up with scheduling regular dental visits ensures a lifetime of healthy smiles for you and your child.
Simplify Your Routine
We can schedule a parent-child routine dental care visit to make it easier to fit into your day and offer a nervous young patient the opportunity to visit alongside their most trusted adult.
General Dentistry FAQs
My teeth feel fine. Do I have to visit the dentist still?
The purpose of general dentistry is to prevent dental problems from developing. It is also to provide quick and effective solutions if your dentist discovers a problem. Even if your teeth and gums feel okay, it is important to go to the dentist so they can look for problems that may not have obvious symptoms. Additionally, we will clean your teeth to remove decay-causing plaque and tartar. If we discover a problem, we will recommend immediate treatment when it is most conservative.
What will happen if I skip my dentist appointments?
If you skip your regular dentist appointments, you are at risk for developing tooth decay and gum disease. The cause of these two common dental problems is a lack of proper dental care. Even if you brush daily, food particles hide in many places including the gum line. If left behind, it can cause teeth cavities to form or even infections in the gums. And these problems will not simply disappear without treatment. Additionally, they can progress into even larger problems. If you let it get to this point, treatment can be intense, painful, and expensive.
How do I take care of my teeth between dental appointments?
At-home oral hygiene is very important. You must remove food particles and plaque from your teeth often. To do this, we suggest brushing your teeth twice a day with a soft-bristled toothbrush and toothpaste that contains fluoride. Flossing once a day will remove food that is in between your teeth. Sugar is the number one cause of dental cavities. You should limit it or cut it out of your diet altogether. We also suggest brushing your tongue to remove plaque-causing bacteria.
Request a Dental Appointment
Do you need a sports mouthguard? Maybe you want some tips on how to care for your child’s teeth. Contact Dr. Duling’s state-of-the-art dental office for dental treatment at 256.202.4186. You can also schedule a consultation online. Keeping the health of the teeth and gums in check is key to enjoying a more comfortable and beautiful smile.