General Dentistry in Dubai

Therapeutic dentistry is the part of the department most people need most often: finding what is wrong, deciding what needs treating now, restoring teeth that can be restored, and dealing with pain when it appears.

It covers examination and treatment planning, fillings, root canal treatment, whitening and emergency care.

The economics of this department are worth understanding, because they are the opposite of intuitive. Everything here is cheap compared with what replaces it. A cavity found early is a filling; the same cavity in eighteen months is a root canal and a crown at several times the cost; a year later it can be an extraction and an implant. Nothing in dentistry pays for itself the way an examination at the right time does — and that is not a sales argument, it is arithmetic that works against our own revenue.

A first appointment is a full examination rather than a look at the tooth that hurts: medical history and current medication, teeth, gums, tongue, palate and soft tissues, existing fillings and crowns checked for leakage, fracture or recurrent decay, the way the teeth meet, the jaw joints, and a screen of the oral mucosa.

A dental operating microscope is used at this stage as well as during treatment. Cracks in a cusp, a leaking margin under an old restoration, early decay in a fissure and the true state of an existing crown are things magnification and coaxial light show and an unaided examination misses — particularly on a tooth that hurts on biting with nothing obvious to see.

Imaging is taken where the examination cannot answer the question, on site: intraoral radiographs, panoramic, and cone beam where the answer needs three dimensions. See CBCT and dental X-ray.

You leave with a written plan: what was found, what needs treatment now, what can be monitored, in what order and at what cost.

Sharp pain to cold that stops the moment the stimulus is removed usually means exposed dentine or a leaking restoration, and a filling is the answer. Pain to cold or heat that lingers for minutes suggests the nerve is inflamed beyond recovery, and the answer is root canal treatment. Pain on biting a single tooth points to a crack, a high restoration or infection at the root tip. Pain that stopped after several bad days is not resolution — it usually means the nerve has died, and the infection that follows is what brings people back a fortnight later with a swollen face.

Getting that distinction right is the whole job, and it is why treatment does not begin at the same appointment as a complaint unless the diagnosis is clear. Root canal treatment here is carried out under a dental operating microscope, which is what makes it possible to find calcified or additional canals, see a crack in the pulp floor and keep the access cavity conservative.

Where too little sound tooth remains to hold a filling, the tooth is covered rather than patched — see crowns and onlays. Timing matters: a tooth that cracks above the gum can be crowned, and the same tooth a year later can split below the gum and become unrestorable.

Come sooner if you have pain that wakes you at night or does not settle with over-the-counter painkillers, swelling of the face or gum, a tooth that has become loose in an adult mouth, gums that bleed for more than two weeks, a broken tooth with a sharp edge or exposed pink tissue, a lost crown or filling, an ulcer or a white or red patch that has not healed within three weeks, or difficulty opening the mouth or swallowing.

Facial swelling with fever, or swelling spreading towards the eye or under the tongue, is not a wait-and-see situation. It is handled through emergency dental care, and if breathing or swallowing is affected it belongs in a hospital emergency department first.

One correction worth making, because it costs people teeth every year: antibiotics do not cure a dental infection. They can control spread, but the source is inside the tooth or the pocket beside it, and until it is drained, treated or removed the infection returns. A course of antibiotics without treating the source is why some patients cycle through three prescriptions in a year for the same tooth.

A consultation starts from AED 650. It covers the examination, the discussion of findings and the written plan.

Imaging and treatment are quoted separately and in writing after the examination. We do not quote treatment over the phone, because the same complaint can be a filling or a root canal followed by a crown, and the difference between those is not a detail. If the plan changes during treatment — a root that turns out to be cracked, decay deeper than the radiograph showed — the revised cost is discussed before that work goes ahead.

Where a tooth is borderline, you get the comparison rather than a recommendation: the cost and likely lifespan of saving it, against the cost of removing and replacing it. Both numbers, then the decision is yours.