Our Technology and Equipment

There is a saying we like at Tangmere: if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Basic equipment means basic treatment and fewer choices. Every piece of equipment below has to earn its place by doing at least one of four things:

Cerec stands for CERamic REConstruction. It is a computer-aided design and milling system that lets us make a porcelain crown, veneer, inlay or onlay here in the practice and fit it the same day. There are no putty impressions, no plaster casts, no temporary crown and no second appointment.

A small 3D camera scans your tooth at 19 microns, which is more accurate than any physical impression, and the milling unit cuts your restoration from a solid ceramic block in about 11 minutes. Because that block is one flawless piece rather than porcelain built up in layers, it is denser and stronger than a lab-made crown, and our porcelain furnace lets us re-fire it until the colour matches your other teeth.

For you, that means we can save weak walls of a tooth that would not survive the wait for a lab crown. Once bonded, the ceramic makes the tooth stronger than it was, and there is no metal to leave a dark line at the gum.

X-rays show us what nobody can see by looking: decay between teeth, infection at a root tip, bone loss, cracks and impacted teeth. Most of these appear months or years before you feel anything, and catching them then usually means simpler treatment.

Our digital sensors use around 80% less radiation than traditional film, and the image appears instantly with no chemical developing. We also use beam-aiming devices that shrink the beam to match exactly what we are imaging, cutting the dose by roughly another 50%.

We also have a Pan-Oral scanner that images your whole jaw from outside your mouth. It is lower resolution but covers far more ground in one picture, so we use it for planning implants, assessing wisdom teeth, spotting hidden cysts, and imaging anyone who cannot tolerate a sensor inside the mouth.

Our in-mouth camera is about the size of a fat pen and puts highly magnified pictures of your teeth on a screen beside the chair. It picks up tiny cracks, very early decay and subtle wear that are invisible to the naked eye, and it means you see exactly what we see rather than taking our word for it. We keep the images on your record so we can compare them at your next visit.

Tangmere was one of the first UK practices to use intra-oral video, back in 1996, and our principal dentist Paul Liano demonstrated it on national television when it first arrived here. Clinic 1 also has a MagnaVue camera built into the dental light for higher magnification during treatment, and all our dental surgeons wear magnifying loupes at up to 4.5x.

You might expect that seeing more means recommending more treatment. Usually the opposite happens. Spotting something while it is tiny often means a remineralisation programme instead of a filling, or a polish instead of a crown.

By the time a drill is needed, decay has usually grown into a cavity, and drilling takes healthy tooth with it, leaving the tooth weaker. Our three drill-free systems deal with decay much earlier, while it is still a softened patch on the surface, and often without an injection.

The mouth is a difficult place to do precise work: small, dark, full of saliva, with a moving tongue and your airway right behind everything. A barrier system isolates the tooth we are working on from the rest of your mouth, and we use one as standard rather than only for complicated cases.

It protects your tongue, cheeks and gums from sharp instruments, and seals the area so debris and water cannot be swallowed or breathed in. It lets us safely remove old amalgam fillings, which release mercury vapour when drilled, and use the strong disinfectants root canal work needs. It also gives you something to rest your teeth on, so your jaw is not aching by the end.

The biggest gain is durability. Dental adhesives hate moisture, and a rubber dam takes the humidity around the tooth from about 98% down to around 43%. That means a stronger bond and a filling far less likely to fail later.

Tangmere Dental Care is a private dental practice combining advanced technology with prevention-led, holistic care. Our mission is to help patients across West Sussex maintain healthy, durable smiles for life.

Monday: 9am – 5pm

Tuesday: 9am – 7pm

Wednesday: 9am – 5pm

Thursday: 9am – 5pm

Friday: 9am – 4pm

Saturday: Mornings by arrangement

Sunday: Closed

Malcolm Rd, Tangmere, Chichester PO20 2HS, UK