Services for your comfort.

Before all else, patient needs and comfort are paramount at Smiles Matter.

Sedation and Pain-free Dentistry

As a clinic, Smiles Matter’s clinical team aim to serve all patients to their optimal comfort level. We work gently with patients in all respects, and any treatment – minor or major can be taken under sedation. During consultations we advise all patients and their guardians on the range of pain-free services we provide. It is our belief that all patients should be presented with the opportunity to decide how they would like us to work with them.

Did you know as many as one-half of the general population have some hesitation or fear about visiting a dentist? Certainly, every patient has a genuine basis for their concerns. Past negative experiences are often an underlying cause for such feelings which can be hard to overcome when considering which dental clinic to pursue when new dental problems present themselves. However, there is also a conundrum for patients who wait for too long to address their dental problems. Time only allows small problems like holes and gum-related concerns the chance to get bigger. That is why our baseline is to encourage any person handling such feelings to simply understand, that there is absolutely no shame in managing your needs in a fully supported pain-free clinic such as ours. .

Advancements in pain-free dentistry coupled with the dentists’ own level of expertise and a positive attitude towards patient care, patients can have a smooth experience at Smiles Matter. Dr Mercieca is a dentist specialising in sedation for over 20 years. He has worked with an extensive range of cases and provided pain-free dentistry to patients experiencing either physical or psychological barriers to dental work or both, including people who have a strong gag reflex, low pain threshold and extreme dental phobia.

Pain-free treatments at Smiles Matter range from:

Oral sedation
IV sedation Dentist
General anaesthetic Dentist

These methods are offered selectively for either minor or major procedures, depending on the duration of the procedure and level of discomfort a patient experiences with dental procedures, or simply upon request.

Smile Makeovers

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take control over your smile? To alter certain aspects of it just to bring out more of your personality? Approach this notion with the assurance that any smile is customisable. That’s what earns this treatment it’s unique name!

As we all know, a great smile is certainly worth its weight in gold. We all want to look and feel our best selves, and it’s important to know that there is a supportive team at Smiles Matter offering a collaborative approach to smile makeover consultations that will guarantee you functionality as well.

The concept of a smile makeover is often wrongly perceived as something you do to look like a movie star and only when you have a massive budget. In reality, a smile makeover is more than something purely cosmetic. It involves an assessment of the appearance of your smile along with the health of your teeth and gums and then, by using one or more dental procedures, enhance and protect your smile into its future.

Consulting with patients on their smile is a very personal process. We explore how to use dental procedures to address the things you dislike about your smile and bring out the parts you like. During the initial consultation, imaging and 3D models of your teeth are shared with you so you can engage in the details and have options modelled back to you. Phases of various treatments are fully explained and their duration, so that you can decide how quickly you want to see results.

People who seek smile makeovers tend to have different concerns ranging from discoloured teeth, teeth that are out of shape or crooked possibly affecting a person’s bite or oral hygiene, wide gaps between teeth, short or long teeth and unhealthy gums. Some of the measures that we can perform to address these concerns include:

Veneers
Gum lifts
Crowns
Caps
Teeth whitening

Check-up and Cleaning

Going to see your dentist regularly really helps to keep your teeth and gums in great condition. During a dental check-up, your dentist will check over your teeth for any troubling signs and advise you how to better protect your teeth through day to day care. If your dentist notices changes to your dental health or needs to look between your teeth, there may be a need to take an x-ray to explore what can’t be seen with the naked eye. An oral cancer screening is also performed where a person might be at risk of this illness. All of these checks can be handled in the same appointment.

A deep clean of your teeth involves removing any plaque or tartar build-up from your teeth, as well as polishing over rough spots or fortifying your teeth with fluoride, as needed. If you want to go beyond the clean and give the appearance of your teeth a lift, let our Practice Managers know in advance so a longer appointment can be arranged.

While we all enjoy that feeling of smooth teeth after a good clean, developing a habit of regular dental visits is ultimately very important. Preserving the health of our whole body over our lives leads to a greater quality of health in the long run. Our teeth are constantly exposed to our good and bad habits, yet oddly, they are not the things we are concerned about when we start to count calories.

From your first appointment, our dentist can determine the intervals for your regular check-ups. Also, what the specific things are that need monitoring between visits. Adopting this conservative approach means there is a better chance your teeth can be treated with less invasive treatment options.

Crowns

If you’ve ever had a bad crack in a tooth or lost a part of one, instead of removing that tooth or forever trying to “refill” it with a filling, a better longer term option is a crown. A crown is effectively a “cap” for your tooth that is seamlessly joined with the existing tooth structure to look identical to the original tooth.

Crowns are certainly the way to go for an aesthetically pleasing, beautiful smile that looks natural. For anyone who is currently covering up that broken down tooth every time they laugh, placing a crown on that tooth will effectively translate into a smile makeover.

At Smiles Matter we seek accuracy with our crowns, using a 3D scanner to examine the depth and shape the crown needs to be to sit perfectly in your bite. We only use metal and mercury-free materials for our crowns, to ensure patients long term safety and well-being.

Teeth-Coloured Fillings

Throughout our lives, we will experience times when small holes start to appear in our teeth. Left untreated, those holes can progress affecting more and more structural layers of the tooth, eventually causing quite a lot of ouch! By treating dental cavities quickly, you can avoid pain and preserve your bite and smile.

Fillings can be applied to cavities that range in size and coloured to look just like your teeth. So, if you think you might have a large hole in one or more of your teeth, don’t despair – just act! At Smiles Matter, we use a wide range of high-quality materials from composites through to porcelain to ensure patients have longer-lasting, durable fillings. We don’t do old-fashioned, black mercury fillings.

We colour match fillings to your teeth, so nothing looks unnatural when you smile or talk. Over time, you’re also likely to forget which particular tooth you had a filling done in, as they just look so natural.

Dentist Implants

Dentist Implants our best efforts, sometimes we experience significant decay, injury or tooth loss which impacts us emotionally and our bite functionally. Implants provide a “new root” for prosthetic teeth, providing a strong, natural-looking and permanent foundation to a person’s dentition.

Dentist Implants can be used to replace one missing tooth or a complete mouth. They can also be used by patients with existing partial dentures once other natural teeth lose their stability. These days the advancements in Dentist Implants are so great, that in cases where multiple teeth need to be replaced, a person can opt for either multiple individual implants, one or more implants used to attach partial dentures, or a full and effective implant located overdenture system popularly known as the “All on 4”. Options for overdenture systems include removable or fixed as per your liking and to suite your oral hygiene care routine.

Importantly, dentist implants and overdenture systems are the longest lasting solutions to missing teeth available today. At Smiles Matter we use high-grade, gold standard implants that with good care can last a lifetime. They feel just like any other tooth and unlike certain prosthetic systems, like bridges, do not require other teeth to be worn down for a fit to take place. The durability, comfort and ability of implants to be colour matched to your existing teeth brings with it so many advantages, that it is a highly sought after procedure and a must have for anyone who wants to preserve their smile and oral condition.

In place of a missing tooth or once an extraction has healed, the typical process starts by installing a titanium rod into a person’s tooth socket under a purposefully designed setting controlling the risk of infection during the procedure. While the rod is inserted, a cap is placed over the top and at the gum line to protect the area further. This work can naturally be done under sedation or with other pain-free measures to maximise comfort or ease anxiety.

Over a period of 6 to 12 weeks, while healing, the bone in the jaw fuses to the rod making it a permanent and secure fixture. The cap is then removed and a small post that connects to the new tooth is installed. Finally, the replacement tooth or crown is fitted and life goes on as normal.

Dr Mercieca and Alexander Petratos have worked together for a number of years, creating implants of the finest quality and attention to detail. Their work is supported by using optimal 3D imaging of a patient’s dentition, moulds and photos to ensure a precise fit of the implant, as well as to assess colour matching from the base to the top of each replacement tooth. They are a highly experienced and qualified duo that will have you smiling and eating with confidence in hardly any time at all.

Teeth Whitening

A really simple way to make a big difference to your smile and youthfulness is by making your smile brighter and whiter. It can be a real boon to one’s confidence to know that their smile simply looks good. So why not make it a point to get those teeth looking great and smile more often? Smiling frequently has a direct physical impact on our body’s endorphin levels. It’s our most natural kick!

A pearly white smile presents beautifully and is easier to achieve than you think. While a lot of promises are made by over the counter pharmaceutical products and branded toothpastes, these items may contain abrasive components and involve long periods of application to see any noticeable results. At Smiles Matter, we have handled teeth whitening procedures for decades, seeing through new innovations at each turn. We know what works best and protects your dental health for the long haul.

Today, we present two effective procedures to our patients depending on what suits them best – an in-practice procedure that will have you walking out our door in up to 2 hours flashing a brilliant smile, or a take home kit that produces very similar results within 14 days.

Toothaches

There are many underlying causes for toothaches, one of which being an infection. So not only is important to seek advice and support soon after teeth related pain emerges, there are certain instances, like when facial swelling appears, when you shouldn’t wait at all.

We can’t stand the idea of a person being in throbbing pain or having a serious underlying concern that could lead to a permanent problem. At Smiles Matter, wherever possible, we will treat any person for an unbearable toothache as soon as possible or on our next working day. We extend this service to all our existing patients and people who are not our regular patients.

Dentures

Do your need to immediately repair your dentures or get replacement dentures? Have you just lost a tooth and need to get an immediate single tooth denture to fill that gap before an important meeting tomorrow? Having implants done and a need temporary to hide gaps while healing? There’s no need for you to be stuck in a smile-emergency, or ever! If you wear dentures or are considering dentures to improve your smile and bite, you are welcome to organise a direct appointment with Smiles Matter’s Dental Prosthetist & Senior Dental Technician, Alexander Petratos.

Patients who have dentures would be familiar with going via a dentist to get a referral to a dental prosthetist. Dental Prosthetists are experienced oral health professionals with extensive training who are registered with AHPRA to consult directly with patients. With Alexander’s experience at hand at Smiles Matter, our patients have access to a professional who can assess and offer wide-ranging denture options to patients up to a premium level.

There are many factors involved with dental prosthetics, such as their cost, stability, fit, longevity, care, capacity for future modifications and perhaps, above all, the effect they are going to have on your smile. Unique techniques can contribute to a lifelike appearance with dentures. Denture characterisation, as one example, ensures that the contouring, shape and colour of denture bases appear realistic to the inside of mouths. For something that will directly your quality of life, we always aim to provide you with a complete picture of what your dentures can help you achieve.

Options for denture work include:

Acrylic Flipper Tooth for single tooth loss
Temporary dentures with a flexible acrylic plate
Acrylic base plate partial dentures
Non-toxic, biocompatible TCS Flexible partial dentures
High durability Chrome-Cobalt Alloy partial dentures
Full upper denture with a strong lightweight palate plate
Full and partial implant retained permanent dentures
Clip-on/clip-off implant supported overdentures
Copy dentures (designed to replace existing dentures)

Dental Extractions

On the whole, removing teeth is not something anyone wants to do, but there are times when it is necessary to do dental extractions. Our highly experienced, careful dentist and sedationist at Smiles Matter has earned his reputation for being one of the very best dentists to work with when it comes to any kind of tooth extraction be that surgical wisdom teeth, general extractions, impacted teeth or complex cases in hospital settings. He is very comfortable handling extractions, a range of patient needs and with working side by side with our Specialist Orthodontist to manage pre-orthodontic cases.

It cannot be emphasised enough that pain-free treatments are available to anyone who needs an extraction but has felt afraid to get it seen to. Our professional team can guide you about all aspects of extractions from your first phone call and will support patients through to post-care.

Custom-made mouthguards

Definitely worth the effort, custom-made mouthguards offer the best protection to the mouths of athletes young and old on the sports field or in the boxing ring. As custom-made mouthguards are fabricated over a model of the athlete’s teeth using a lightweight thermoplastic material, the finished product grips exactly to the mouth. This simple device helps prevent damage to teeth and significantly lowers the risk of fracturing jaws.

One thing is for sure, there are different features and qualities custom-made mouthguards can achieve depending on the materials used and the manufacturing process. Some mouthguards have the ability to adapt to a person’s mouth more quickly and with better suction than others due to the layering of the materials used. These days there are home-kit based mouthguard services that sell themselves on the basis of being cheaper and with limited or no consultations with a dentist involved. However, just like any other dental procedure, there is valuable information to be gained from consulting with a Dental Technician about mouthguards as certain types can lose their shape within a matter of weeks or from a material which may affect breathing and speaking while worn. Also, there are various looks to choose from with custom-made mouthguards, so why wouldn’t you want to see your options firsthand so you can pick out a style that suites your game personality.

Not only for athletes, but by using different materials, custom-made mouthguards are mostly needed in general dentistry to treat patients who grind their teeth during sleep. When people grind their teeth at night they may not realise the effect this unconscious behaviour can have to their teeth within a relatively short span of time. Not only to teeth, but in severe cases, a person can wake up from sleep with a locked jaw from over-stressed facial muscles not releasing. Sometimes wearing a mouthguard can treat these problems entirely, eventually doing away with this bedtime accessory.

Other dental treatments

There is a wide range of other dental treatments that fall under general dentistry not limited to periodontics, endodontics, root canals and gum treatments. We always offer patients a full assessment and explanation of any treatment that could preserve their natural teeth and oral health and can equally handle such breadth of treatments.

Orthodontics

Our Specialist Orthodontist Dr Clark sees to all patients indicated for braces. For more information on the kinds of braces Dr Clark works with and how each procedure is undertaken, please click here (link to Gary’s website).