Dr. Timothy Gross has been in dentistry for 31 years. At this stage in their career, having achieved as much success as Dr. Gross has, most professionals might be content putting the whole endeavor in cruise control until retirement. But Dr. Gross has never been one to sit still.
His practice, Dr. Timothy Gross’ Dental Excellence, has built its reputation over the last 15 years on the island on the strength of his ceaseless pursuit of new and better ways to improve the health of his patients. For him, it’s not just about cleaning their teeth. It’s about treating the entire patient, using all the considerable means at his disposal.
“I think every dentist will tell you that there’s kind of an evolution to your practice,” he said. “You’re always looking to expand your horizons and learn more and more. You know, I don’t want to be on autopilot. If I practice until I’m 80 years old, I want to be learning things until that last day and stay on the cutting edge.”
That evolution in his practice has seen Dr. Gross looking beyond the boundaries of dentistry, to view the mouth as a bellwether of the entire body’s wellbeing.
“It’s become more heavily into diagnosis now, asking how can we maintain your health? What do we see that could be a potential problem down the road?” he said. “And if we see it, what can we do to intercede and prevent problems down the road?”
He points to a slew of new technologies, all of which are as much a part of his practice as floss and paper bibs, that are leading the way toward offering patients greater insight into their own health.
Dr. Gross consults with a patient before treatment begins.
Take the classic dental X-ray. In the past, you might just get a static image showing where cavities might be lingering on your enamel. With the three-dimensional X-rays that Dr. Gross offers his patients, he can essentially create a fully realized 3D image of not just your teeth and jaw, but all the areas affected by changes in your health.
“We can see basically everything from the eyes down to the neck,” he said. The images this 3D X-rays creates are astoundingly detailed, laying bare everything that might be impacting a patient’s health. He’s had 3D X-rays that showed a patient’s sinuses filled with effluent from a deep abscess. He’s spotted nasal polyps that he could pass along to his patient’s physician. He’s even potentially saved a few lives. “I’ve had three patients in the past year where we found enough calcification in their carotid artery that we sent the images to their physicians,” Dr. Gross said. “Two ended up getting stents put in and another had to have a bypass of their artery.”
Another way that Dr. Gross is expanding beyond typical dentistry is in treating a malady that he has suffered from for the past 19 years, sleep apnea. Like many who suffer from this deceptively deadly condition, he grew frustrated with the cumbersome masks of a sleep machine and the discomfort of a one-size-fits-all oral device.
“We have multiple sleep monitors here to screen people, so if we can see a bad disorder we send them off to a pulmonologist,” he said. “If it’s a minor sleep issue, we can make an oral device to pull your jaw forward and get you breathing again. We also give you a monitor to take home for a few nights so we can check if your oxygen and everything is good. If not, we adjust the appliance until you’re breathing well.”
It goes to show what a vital role Dr. Gross can play in a patient’s health.
“There is no pill, there is no surgery that cures sleep apnea,” he said. “And the problem is, sleep apnea kills people. That’s the bottom line. It just breaks your body down and eventually kills you.”
And speaking of things that could break down and eventually kill you, Dr. Gross was among the first dentists in our area to see the malignant threat that most patients faced without even knowing it. If you had fillings put in prior to the late 90s, odds are good you have toxic metals in your mouth.
Dr. Timothy Gross and his wife, Melissa, at their dental practice located at 15 Bow Circle on Hilton Head Island.
“I have plenty of patients with a mouthful of mercury -based fillings, and they’re healthy. But, we have other people who get referred to us by their physicians because they have a lot of heavy metal toxicity,” he said. “They have us safely remove the mercury- based fillings.”
These fillings, crafted with the second-most-toxic element on earth besides plutonium, have been a staple of dentistry going back decades.
“I started placing mercury fillings in dental school, but a conference I attended in 1998 completely changed my mind,” he said. “If I take a mercury filling out of your mouth, it’s illegal for me to flush it down the toilet. But somehow it’s OK to have it in your mouth.”
Gross perfected the art of safely removing mercury fillings, ensuring that the minute shavings produced when the filling is removed are kept out of your airways and our waterways.
“The number one cause of mercury pollution in the environment nowadays is dental offices,” he said. “You have to have special training to safely remove mercury fillings. There are only a couple of us that I’m aware of in Beaufort County that do it that way.”
Sometimes, the priority is promoting overall health and well-being through these new cutting-edge dental techniques. But the mouth has maladies of its own, and Dr. Gross has remained on the vanguard of techniques and technologies that lead to a healthier, more beautiful smile.
“When you look at something like Invisalign, the technology has come so far even in the last five or six years,” he said. “It’s not just for straightening teeth anymore. You can actually fix the bite. So if patients are having TMJ problems, you can use Invisalign to correct it without having to wear braces.”
And, like any technology, it’s still evolving, with AI now augmenting the effectiveness of Invisalign. “Instead of having to come in every 6-8 weeks to get new aligners made, we can gives you six months or a year’s worth of aligners and have you take photos with your phone,” he said. “You send them to us, the AI analyzes it and we can tell if you’re on the right track.”
It’s a bold new world in dentistry, one that goes far beyond the old drill-and-fill days. And for patients on Hilton Head Island, Dr. Timothy Gross’ Dental Excellence offers the best way to greet the future with a smile.
