Dentistry for Laguna Woods Village

Pearl32 is on Calle de la Plata in Laguna Hills, a few minutes from the Village gates. More than 18,600 people live in Laguna Woods Village and there is no dental practice inside it, so everyone leaves the community to see a dentist. We have built the way we run our days around that, starting with the simplest part: the Village bus comes to our plaza, so you can get here and home again without asking anyone for a lift.

Getting here, and getting home again

This is usually the real obstacle, so we will deal with it first.

The Village bus comes here

You do not need anyone to drive you. Laguna Woods Village runs its free resident bus to our plaza, every day the service operates. The first run is at 9 a.m. and the last is at 4:30 p.m. If you want to confirm today’s route and pick-up time, call Village Transportation on (949) 597-4659.

If you drive, or someone brings you

There is free parking in the building’s own lot and free street parking nearby, so there are no meters to feed. A paid parking structure is there too if the lot happens to be full. If a son or daughter is driving you over, tell us when you book and we will do everything we can to run to time, because their afternoon matters too.

The dentistry that matters most at this stage of life

Dentistry at seventy-five is not dentistry at thirty-five with more grey hair. The problems are different, and so is what a good outcome looks like. This is the work we see most often from the Village.

Replacing teeth that are already gone

• Single dental implants, and implant-supported bridges
• All-on-4 and full-arch implant treatment, where a whole arch is carried on a small number of implants
• New dentures, relines when the fit has changed, and repairs
• Implant-secured dentures, for people who are tired of adhesive and movement

Protecting the teeth you still have

• Periodontal care and gum maintenance, which is what decides whether teeth are kept or lost at this age
• Root decay, which behaves differently from the cavities you had as a young adult and is far more common once gums recede
• Dry mouth caused by medication, which quietly accelerates everything else and is very manageable once someone actually addresses it
• Repairing crowns, bridges and fillings placed decades ago that are now failing at the edges

More detail on each of these is on our dental implants, periodontics and general dentistry pages.

Who you will see

Dr. Nojan Jahedmanesh, DDS earned his dental degree at Loma Linda University and holds a certificate in prosthodontics from UCLA. Prosthodontics is the area of dentistry concerned with replacing missing teeth: crowns, bridges, dentures and implants. It is the training that matters most for the work described above, and it is not training most general dentists have. He practises as a general dentist.

If dental visits have become something you dread, say so when you book. We offer sedation, and there is no version of that conversation we have not had before.

Insurance, Medicare, and knowing the cost before you agree to anything

Original Medicare does not cover routine dental care. That catches a great many people by surprise, often at exactly the wrong moment.

Many residents carry a Medicare Advantage plan that includes a dental benefit, and those benefits vary enormously between plans, both in what they cover and in what they cap each year. Bring your card, or read us the plan name over the phone, and we will check what it actually covers before you commit to anything.

We accept most PPO dental plans. For any treatment beyond a routine visit you will get a written estimate first, itemised, showing what your plan is expected to pay and what it will leave you. Nobody should be agreeing to implant treatment without seeing that on paper.

Come and talk to us first

If you are weighing up implants, unhappy with a denture, or simply have not seen a dentist since you moved, come in and talk it through before deciding anything. You will get an honest opinion about what needs doing now, what can wait, and what does not need doing at all.