State-of-the-Art Equipment including Panoramic Radiography

While Dr. Wagner and her staff strive to maintain a friendly small-town Red Bank feel, her practice offers a full complement of state-of-the-art equipment to ensure the best in patient care. For example, dental x-rays are an important diagnostic tool, and are an essential part of dental treatment. X-rays allow your dentist to timely detect damage to teeth and gums that are not readily visible during a routine checkup, often uncovering problems that are still in their early stages. X-rays supplement the dentist’s own eyes by showing the condition of your teeth, their roots, your jaw placement and the overall composition of your facial bones. This information is essential to properly and timely diagnose a host of dental issues, including challenging TMJ issues. X-rays corroborate the presence and degree of gum disease, cavities, abscesses and abnormal growths, such as cysts and tumors. They also show the exact location of impacted teeth or unerupted teeth.

Virtually all dental offices have the capability to take bitewing x-rays that show detailed images of smaller areas in your mouth. They are excellent for revealing decay or cavities between teeth, and also show your teeth above the gum line and the height of the bone between teeth. Anyone who has ever sat in a dental chair knows the sometimes uncomfortable feeling of biting down on the cardboard tab to hold the bitewing x-ray in place on the tongue side of your teeth. The information obtained from those x-rays are well worth it. Normally, four bitewings are taken as a set, two pictures on each side of the mouth. Your dentist may also take a periapical x-ray, which is a single x-ray to show a specific area of concern, such as when you have a toothache.

Dr Wagner’s practice also has the specialized equipment for panoramic radiography (panoramic x-rays). These x-rays display a general comprehensive view of your entire mouth on a single image including the teeth, upper and lower jaws, and surrounding structures and tissues giving her a “big picture” vantage point to assess potential problems. The panoramic x-ray produces a flat two-dimensional image of your curved jaw structure. Unlike a traditional intraoral bitewing x-ray where the film is placed inside of the mouth, the film for a panoramic x-ray is contained inside of the machine.

Panoramic x-rays, typically found in the offices of oral surgeons, provide valuable information about the nasal area, maxillary sinuses, tooth positioning and gum and bone irregularities. These x-rays are indispensable in planning treatment for full and partial dentures, extractions, and implants. A panoramic x-ray can also reveal advanced periodontal disease, oral cysts, tumors, and oral cancer, impacted teeth, TMJ disorders, and sinusitis.