Among the credentials of our dentist Dr. Scott L. Rice is dental implant training at the Kois Center. Dentists who have trained at the Kois Center approach dentistry differently than traditional dentists, which can lead to better treatment results for many patients.

What Is the Kois Center?

The Kois Center is an advanced dental training and practice facility located in Seattle. For dentists like Dr. Rice, it offers a comprehensive training program that not only teaches individual skills, such as dental implants, aesthetic dentistry, and restorative dentistry, but a new philosophical approach to dentistry. The Kois Center approach is designed to give patients better overall health.

A Health-Motivated Model

Traditional dentistry focuses on a reparative model, which means looking at and dealing with tooth problems as they arise. If you have a cavity, they will give you a filling. If that filling gets decay around the edges, they will give you a larger filling. If the tooth breaks because the filling is too large, they will give you a dental crown.

A health, risk-management, or wellness model of dentistry is based on trying to predict and prevent disease and damage to your mouth. We will look at factors that may contribute to your susceptibility to decay by checking out your genetic risk factors, the population of bacteria in your mouth, medications you are taking, and more. We will use those factors to help you prevent the need for a filling. If a filling is used, we will employ the best technology available for sealing your tooth and preventing future decay.

The goal is to reduce your need for dental care while maximizing your dental health.

A 4-Step Approach to Dental Health

Although Kois Center dentists consider many complex factors in evaluating your dental health, it breaks down into four main concerns:

  • Gum health and bone support
  • Individual teeth
  • Bite and jaw joint
  • Smile characteristics

Gum health and bone support is about making sure you have healthy gums and that your jawbone is not being damaged by periodontal disease.

Individual teeth are evaluated in terms of their structural integrity and an attempt to anticipate damage due not only to decay, but also due to bite forces.

Bite and jaw joint evaluation means looking at the balance of bite forces in your mouth, whether they are excessive or uneven. Imbalance in the bite force may be either the cause or effect of temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ), which has effects far beyond your mouth.

Smile characteristics include the aesthetic elements of your smile, including the whiteness of your teeth, the shape of your teeth, the translucence and evenness of the enamel, as well as how these all combine to create an attractive smile.

Empowering Patients

Kois Center dentists like Dr. Rice present all the information from evaluations to you. The goal is to help you understand what’s really going on in your mouth and what your prevention and treatment options are. This helps you make informed decisions about your dental care–and it is always your decision.

You will never be pressured into accepting a treatment plan, just made to understand the advantages and disadvantages of each treatment option.

If you want to learn more about what makes Kois Center dentists like Dr. Rice different, please schedule a consultation at Rice Dentistry in Irvine, serving patients from across Orange County and beyond.