8615 NE Hazel Dell Avenue, Vancouver, WA  98665

(360) 574-7477

You see what we see with

Interactive Diagnosis

More people than ever are very interested in achieving optimum health. High tech video scopes help our patients recognize dental conditions and make better decisions. Electronic patient records capture more diagnostic details and make it easier to share them with our patients.

Video Scopes show the "Big Picture"

I remember going to a dentist as a child, hoping he wouldn’t find anything as he picked through my teeth talking jargon to his assistant. He said I had cavities now and then, but I never saw one, and most of what the dentist did was somewhat mysterious to me. Part of my personal mission is to offer a pleasant, enlightened dental experience in a personal way. Video scopes can be used with x-rays and in the mouth to demonstrate nearly any dental condition easily.

Dentists often use magnifying glasses and special lighting to study x-rays. Now we use a powerful video camera with a magnifying lens to display x-rays on video monitors during your exam. You can actually see the grains of the emulsion on the surface of the x-ray! Changing the amount of magnification and light admitted through the iris helps to clarify subtle details. Features of interest include existing dental restorations, decay or gum disease, and anatomy of the teeth and jaws. Patients are often interested to see how deep an area of decay is, and exactly where it is so effort to brush and floss can be focused where it is needed most.

We also have a video scope that is used inside the mouth with an infection control baggie to explore teeth, gums, and other oral features. This is useful for displaying broken teeth, focal areas of gum disease, corroded or worn edges of fillings, and many other conditions. I wish my childhood dentist could have shown me the funny bumps on the back of my upper canines that I sometimes worried about - the bumps were normal anatomy, and I was sure something was wrong!

We use computers to build electronic patient records, complete with tooth charts, pictures from our video scope, digital x-rays, and more. We print treatment plans that include diagnostic details related to each procedure in the plan.