Experiencing life from having severely bad teeth, failing caps and dental bridges is emotionally exhausting for many patients. Our great satisfaction in serving our wonderful patients with their journey of having teeth-in-a-day for a new smile, especially when patients tears of happiness is present, is difficult to put into words. Every all-on-4 new smile experience has a story to tell...When we met our patients in real life, we ask questions to get to know them better. We listen to their past dental work, previous dental experience, and beliefs.

We try to unearth their dental and life story, and to tell our own as clinicians. The end goal is to find out if we can bring these patients back to good oral health and give them a great smile.In this process of knowing each other we tap into the underlying reason patients lose their teeth and why they have decided to come to see us – to get to be the very best version of themselves; a version they have always had within them that got lost along the way.

Dr. Armin Salimi understands that emotional health and physical well being are intertwined. But its not always clear how each element affects his dental implant patients.

We have found that most of our patients know that a negative emotional state due to the lack of healthy smile or having an embarrassing smile, wheather from having periodontitis or bad teeth from childhood, can have a correlating effect on the way they feel physically.

For instance, feeling depressed from not having the ability to smile in front of people can make a patient less likely to date, eat with confidence and maintain and find a job.

During their first initial dental implant consultation, our patients react to a dental diagnosis with a range of emotions, including fear, sadness and other emotions, and in some cases, low self-esteem. Patients are individuals, with their own unique set of life experiences and their own ways of coping emotionally with stressful teeth related situations. 

We are not professionals expected to be psychotherapists or counselors, nor to deliver direct mental health services to our patients. However, it is important for  Dr.Armin Salimi, and his team to be able to recognize the emotional reactions of our patients for a variety of reasons.

First, while newly-diagnosed all-on-four patients may have access to their emotions and express them openly with  Dr.Armin Salimi, they may also suppress their feelings. Suppressed feelings ultimately have the same affect on conversations about a dental diagnosis as do directly expressed feelings. Occasionally, our patients struggling with emotions have a history of interaction with their former dentist(s) in a way that has not been productive. 

Our oral healthcare professionals, in spite of the challenges and the limitations, do play an important role in helping patients cope emotionally with a dental related diagnosis. For better or worse, patients may, at least when initially diagnosed with hopeless teeth, have no other emotional support beyond, for example, the members of our dental team. Family members may not yet have been brought into the discussions about their diagnosis, or they may not yet be ready themselves to cope with the diagnosis. 

While our patients develop an emotional support with our team members, often with the guidance and encouragement of their family members, if they are able to make an emotional connection early on in their diagnosis, they will be that much better prepared to cope as they move forward with their new smile from having teeth-in-a-day treatment. Our oral healthcare professionals can essentially pave the way for our patients.