Who is a Prosthodontist, and What Do We Do?

William – Patient: It pretty much all started when I finally had to have basically an emergency root canal. Ended up at work one day and it’s just a massive amount of pain – truthfully prior to that I didn’t really take good care of my teeth, I wasn’t much of a picture person, I didn’t really like showing my teeth, but the kind of last straw was I think it was about a year before my brother’s wedding when I had this impacted or issue within my teeth, and I wanted to have a good smile at least for my brother’s wedding – that is what drove me to want to continue to get some work done after just getting the emergency side taken care of, I wanted something that was going to look good on a picture and be able to look back on that picture later and be okay with it – not be embarrassed about it or not like where I was at that time.

I called some places, and most of them couldn’t fit me in for days or weeks in some cases, and Dr. Han was actually able to get me in, I believe, the next day – technically I think he even offered to do that day after I got off work and it worked out great it was where I was living at the time – he was right across the street, so it was like I could walk there in 2 minutes, but it was more about when he could get me in and I kept coming back because he was not judgmental about where I was with how I took care of things at the time and helped me look at what could change.

Dr. Joon Han: William came to my office to improve his smile. After evaluation, we found out that he had multiple cavities in his front teeth. So I told him we can work on your teeth by putting crowns and veneers and the combination of that in order to enhance his smile

William – Patient: Now that his work is done it’s definitely much more friendly to smile, I am in a better place and I care about what the smile looks like. I am not afraid to show the teeth anymore. I would recommend Dr. Han, I actually have to my brother – most of the reason I would recommend him is because of their friendly demeanor. I don’t feel like just a patient I feel like they care about who I am here, and Dr. Han and the rest of the staff at Scharrington Dental don’t make you feel like anybody but a friend or a colleague vs. just another patient. They take care of you – they don’t judge, and they involve you in every step of the way.

Hi, I am Alison. I am a patient at Scharrington Dental. I had a full upper and lower arch supported by dental implants, including four cycle implants. I have always had dental phobia, I have always had great sensitivity to my teeth. I have also had extensive restoration. It had again failed, meaning that I was at the point where I was looking at getting my teeth extracted and getting dentures because of the pain and the cost. The hybrid dentures was interesting to me and I’d seen the commercials and I went and talked to my dentist at the time about this option. He was hesitant, but then he recommend his friend, an oral surgeon – I didn’t really care for the oral surgeon, but again I was in a rush I wanted this done, and I felt like the less I knew with my phobia, the better I would do. Boy, was I wrong!

The surgery was supposed to be 4 to 5 hours, where it would be an upper and lower, and the possibility of a zygoma implant and it ended up being 10. It was the nightmare that I thought would always happen, and it literally changed my life for the worse and I had so many courses of antibiotics that they said you have to have one of these removed, and I was just devastated, so I reached out, and I looked into other people that were Specialists and everybody refused.
I felt alone and unsupported and just hopeless, and then I said to myself you know what? I am a board-certified internist. I am going to find a board-certified Prosthodontist! And I looked and I looked and I saw Dr. Joon Han and I read his profile and I said, no maybe this is the real light, maybe this is what I need.

Dr. Han was the only one out of 20 oral surgeons and dentists and Prosthodontists and all the people I had reached out to, who agreed to help me. When he gave me the treatment plan, it was not forced at me – there wasn’t the ‘you must have this much money’. It was kind of like – this is what we are going to do, and it is a journey, journey is here: we have got to get a panorex, we have got to see what is going on, and then journey number 2 is those prosthetics they don’t fit you, you need new ones. So do we work with what we have? Well, we have to see that the implant is stable and I’m starting to understand it. So the day of the surgery, they went to look, and all four of them on the lower fell out. Not just one, all four had failed, and Dr. Han and Dr. Paul took the effort to fix all four of them at that same time.

The difference in the surgeries was – I can’t even describe it to you. My husband was there. He was part of it – all the questions were answered. We had a picture of these massive zygoma things. We had a picture of, you know my blood pressure, my vitals – everything was stable. When I had the replacement and all the new hardware, the fit was amazing, and I still struggle with this because it is so beautiful. You know I have the teeth, I have the ability to talk, I don’t have the air leaks this is the teeth that I am going to have for the rest of my life – they don’t hurt, they’re beautiful I know how to take care of them and I get to go to my favorite dentist, Dr. Han.

Laima – Patient: My name is Laima and I had a very bad situation – my gums were bleeding, there was inflammation the pockets between bridges and gums was very deep, I had a sensitivity to cold food and also hard food – it was hard to chew.

This place was like a gap was bigger, and bigger, and I said enough – we need to do something.

Dr. Joon Han: Lima came to my office because she had a concern with the two front teeth and she didn’t like the way it looked and then she wanted to get something done. She also told me that she wanted me to check everything because she said that she hasn’t seen a dentist and she doesn’t know what else that’s going on.

When I looked at her overall her oral health she was in a very serious condition – she didn’t know she had a serious condition. There was a lot of decays, the bridge that she had was failing I mean every single aspect of her teeth were failing, so what I told her is you need a complete full mouth rehabilitation in order to achieve what you are looking for. What we did for her is we did starting from implants to crowns to a lot of the gum surgeries and gum disease treatment, so we did a comprehensive treatment of her entire mouth.

Laima – Patient: When the work was done I just felt a big relief. I knew now I can enjoy life, and I can eat everything what I like – special, special pistachios, nuts, no more sensitivity I can drink hot or cold – I’m taking walks with my husband, we meet our neighbors, and we can talk, and I like to do some art. I like to paint with oil, sometimes with pencils or pastels – it’s like a mediation for me, I am so happy now so confident of my smile and of course it changed my life you know.

I am so thankful to Dr. Han I just feel like I’m blessed to have him in my life

Mary Rose – Patient: Hi, my name is Mary Rose I am a patient of Dr. Han, I had dental veneers on the top portion of my teeth, when I first came into see Dr. Han, I came to see him as a general dentist for general dentistry, and in my conversation with him I told him I was unhappy with the way me teeth had started chipping and told him I was unhappy with the way my teeth had started chipping and started getting thin, and so he recommended veneers, and we spoke about that at length.

Dr. Joon Han: Mary Rose came in because she had concerns about her smile, she noticed that she had a lot of chipped front teeth from the moment of the consultation – she asked what can I do to improve my smile? I told her the best way to improve her smile is getting veneers.

Mary Rose – Patient: We did look at length about the shading, and he made some recommendations because sometimes you see veneers and then you see veneers that are not very natural looking because they are really brilliant – a brilliant kind of white and he didn’t recommend that he recommended something that looked pretty much like the colour and shade of the teeth that I already had. I really couldn’t believe what it looked like, I envisioned it, but I couldn’t believe it when he showed me what it looked like, especially after putting temporary veneers in and then seeing the real ones, was just a – I just couldn’t believe what they looked like.

I think a smile is really important to the whole facial expression of you as an individual, and I really can’t tell you how many people, when I had my photograph taken how many people said something to me about my smile, and it was striking I had a regular smile I just didn’t have the kind of smile in the kind of teeth that I have now. So that’s a compliment to Dr. Han!