New Patient Information

At Bayberry Dental Care, we want our patients to know what to expect during your first visit with us. It is our goal that you feel comfortable with us and allowing us to take care of your teeth.

During your first visit, we ask that you call our office to make an appointment. New patients will have to fill out one-time registration paperwork. The information you will need is your insurance information, dental history, medical history, and authorization for us to use the information you provided. We ask that if you have recently had x-rays taken that they are forwarded to us, if not we will take x-rays during your visit.

When possible, we encourage our patients to use our website as a resource to answer any questions that you may have prior to your first visit. No matter if its implants, cosmetics, or extractions, we offer a lot of different dental care services.

All patients under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Be sure to schedule your first appointment with us so we can help make sure your teeth are healthy!

Kathleen M. Falsey, D.D.S., operates Bayberry Dental Care at 8014 West 171^st St, Tinley Park, Illinois, 60477. To schedule an appointment, call 708-802-8300 or visit Bayberry Dental Care and fill out a contact sheet.

Cracked Teeth

Breaking a tooth is painful and scary, but at Bayberry Dental Care in Tinley Park, help is available. We encourage our patients to wear mouthguards whenever they do something dangerous and to avoid habits such as chewing on ice that could cause a tooth to crack. But accidents do happen, and we hope our patients will remember our advice when they need it.

Teeth are subjected to tremendous force when we bite down. Our molars have wide surfaces to distribute the force and strong ligaments anchoring them, but they can split and their cusps can break off. Smaller teeth are much more vulnerable to breaking or tilting when used for chewing, and they can break from the force of nighttime teeth grinding. If a patient does break a tooth, they should rinse their mouth with salt water and cover the broken section with orthodontic wax or sugar-free gum. (If they have face lacerations, they should go to the emergency room before seeing a dentist.)

If a tooth is only slightly chipped or cracked, we may be able to repair it with bonding. But if a fissure goes deep, we will want to do a root canal procedure to prevent the pulp from becoming infected. When a molar splits, we may want to drill away a bit more material to make room for a partial crown. Full crowns may be necessary for teeth that are severely chipped or cracked, and if a tooth root is cracked, the tooth may need to be replaced. However, we try to save teeth as often as possible, and long-term restorations can be planned after a patient’s immediate needs are cared for.

Kathleen M. Falsey, D.D.S., operates Bayberry Dental Care at 8014 West 171^st St, Tinley Park, Illinois, 60477. To schedule an appointment, call 708-802-8300 or visit Bayberry Dental Care and fill out a contact sheet.

 

Children's Oral Health Care

To have a lifetime of good oral health, it starts with practicing good cleaning habits at a young age. This February is National Children’s Dental Health month that is sponsored by the American Dental Association to promote good oral hygiene for children. At Bayberry Dental Care, we advise our patients to begin cleaning their children’s teeth the day that they develop.

Your children’s baby teeth act as placeholders for their permanent teeth. Tooth decay in baby teeth can create spacing problems for their adult teeth and affect how they talk. When possible, we encourage you to brush your children’s teeth with a soft-bristled toothbrush and a dab of toothpaste. If your child is too young to allow you to brush their teeth and gums, use a washcloth on their teeth to get rid of any particles and bacteria.

Don’t forget to teach your children how to brush and floss their teeth when they are old enough. The cleaning habits you install in your children increases the chance for years of good oral health.

Kathleen M. Falsey, D.D.S., operates Bayberry Dental Care at 8014 West 171^st St, Tinley Park, Illinois, 60477. To schedule an appointment, call 708-802-8300 or visit Bayberry Dental Care and fill out a contact sheet.

Post-Extraction Swelling

Are you anticipating getting a tooth removed? There’s probably nothing to worry about. Here at Bayberry Dental Care, we routinely perform simple extractions that leave patients more comfortable and in a better position to care for their oral health in the future. We provide patients with instructions to stay safe and minimize discomfort while recuperating, but we thought it would be a good idea to teach people how to deal with swelling ahead of time.

Swelling prevents harmful pathogens from entering through the socket and makes membranes more permeable to peptides the immune system uses. But normally, the blood will quickly clot, sealing off the empty socket. In the first forty-eight hours after an extraction, the patient may try to minimize swelling by holding a cold pack against their mouth. The pack should be dry and they should use it for no more than fifteen minutes at a time. They should also allow fifteen minutes to pass before putting the cold pack back on.

Usually, swelling peaks within three days of an extraction. After that, a patient may try to speed its reduction by applying hot packs, again using the fifteen on/fifteen off rule. It will take a few days for the swelling to go down completely. Black or white discoloration around an extraction site requires urgent attention, but red discoloration is expected and will fade with the swelling.

Kathleen M. Falsey, D.D.S., operates Bayberry Dental Care at 8014 West 171^st St, Tinley Park, Illinois, 60477. To schedule an appointment, call 708-802-8300 or visit Bayberry Dental Care and fill out a contact sheet.

 

Smoking and Pulp Infections

It’s well-known that smoking will stain the teeth and put the smoker at risk for oral cancer. But only recently have scientists started investigating what it does to the inside of a tooth. We’re experienced providers of root canal therapy at Bayberry Dental Care in Tinley Park and we’ve been able to save many teeth that would have otherwise been extracted. But a new study shows that smokers face additional challenges combatting dental pulp infections.

Pulpitis, or dental pulp inflammation, is an immune system response that isolates harmful bacteria. It can be triggered by a dental injury or by an infection. One of the immune system’s core components is the antimicrobial peptide, which is an amino acid that kills bacteria. However, pulp infections often prove difficult to fight, and if they progress, they can cause pain, bad breath, and facial abscesses.

A recent study found that smokers lack antimicrobial peptides in their dental pulp. It was already known that smokers had weakened immune systems and were more vulnerable to gum infections, but now we know they suffer more recurring pulp infections, as well. We will continue to work hard to prevent the spread of pulp infections, but we want patients to understand why smoking complicates their treatment. We also wanted to pass along the researchers’ observation that antimicrobial peptides sometimes grow back after people quit smoking.

Kathleen M. Falsey, D.D.S., operates Bayberry Dental Care at 8014 West 171^st St, Tinley Park, Illinois, 60477. To schedule an appointment, call 708-802-8300 or visit Bayberry Dental Care and fill out a contact sheet.

 

Electric Toothbrush

There is nothing wrong with using a traditional toothbrush to clean your teeth as long as you’re cleaning the right way. When using a traditional toothbrush it is crucial that patients brush their teeth for all two minutes to clean properly. But studies have shown that a large number of people don't clean their teeth for the appropriate amount of time. Dentists at Bayberry Dental Care recommend an electric toothbrush to get the most effective clean possible.

With a traditional toothbrush, there are an estimated 300 strokes per minute while cleaning, compared to the thousands of strokes per minute an electric toothbrush produces. This translates to cleaner teeth with less plaque buildup and gum disease. There are a variety of electric toothbrushes to choose from and a variety at different prices. It is recommended that you ask someone at Bayberry Dental Care to find out which toothbrush is best for you.

Dr. Kathleen Falsey stresses brushing properly is the most important thing, but for anybody who has trouble brushing and is looking for better oral hygiene should consider an electric toothbrush. The electric toothbrush will clean the spots you may miss with your traditional brush and help prevent additional plaque buildup from occurring.

Kathleen M. Falsey, D.D.S., operates Bayberry Dental Care at 8014 West 171^st St, Tinley Park, Illinois, 60477. To schedule an appointment, call 708-802-8300 or visit Bayberry Dental Care and fill out a contact sheet.

When Baby Teeth Don't Fall Out

Are you embarrassed to smile because you’re an adult with baby teeth? We at Bayberry Dental Care in Tinley Park would like to help you. Retained deciduous teeth, or baby teeth, are a somewhat unusual phenomenon, but not all that rare. Treatment will depend on the teeth’s exact position, but we want patients to understand that extractions may be the best thing for their dental health and bite comfort, as well.

Typically, the roots of the baby teeth dissolve as the permanent teeth erupt. There are a few reasons why this may fail to happen, such as if the roots are fused to the jaw bone. But in a lot of cases, the adult teeth simply never develop. The lateral incisors in the upper jaw are the teeth that are likeliest to be congenitally missing. The baby teeth would never fall out if nothing is pushing them, but we can still extract them. After that, we may place an implant to mount an artificial crown or provide the patient with a denture.

Sometimes the adult tooth develops but pushes through the gum line at a different place from its baby equivalent. This most often happens with the central incisors in the lower jaw. As a result, a person could have two sets of teeth. Overcrowding and dental infections would likely ensue, since teeth are very hard to brush when they are jumbled behind each other. After extracting the baby teeth, we would likely refer the patient for orthodontic care.

Kathleen M. Falsey, D.D.S., operates Bayberry Dental Care at 8014 West 171^st St, Tinley Park, Illinois, 60477. To schedule an appointment, call 708-802-8300 or visit Bayberry Dental Care and fill out a contact sheet.