Helena Hart, MD

I’ve been meaning to review Dr. Crippen and his staff for quite a while now. I first started bringing my daughter to Dr. Crippen when she was maybe 1.5 or 2 yrs old. Now, she’s 11 y/o and I have a 4 y/o who sees him. Both of my children feel so comfortable going to the dentist thanks to Dr. Crippen and the rest of the staff. Your children feeling comfortable now is key to setting them up to follow up with their future dental and medical care when they’re adults. This was magnified for me when we moved to Folsom when my daughter was almost 7 y/o.

Because Folsom is full of families, I figured it’d be easy to find a good pediatric dentist and it’d be nice not to drive out to Sacramento. I was referred to one of those corporate dental places (I’ll refrain from naming it here) by another parent. The dentist that we saw basically traumatized my daughter by telling her that she had six cavities and would have to have four separate procedures and if we didn’t have them filled then they would progress to her needing a root canal on baby teeth!!!(yes…she actually verbalized this to me in front of a 7 year-old who I had told her ahead of time was anxious about coming to a new dentist).

That same dentist also never showed me xrays to show me where these cavities were. You can just imagine my fury. Needless to say, I took my daughter back to Dr. Crippen for a second opinion, because I trusted him and figured if anyone was going to do any procedures on my daughter’s mouth it was going to be him and not that other dentist. He was sad to see my daughter so terrified to be in his chair as he had known her from previous visits to be smiling and chipper. He put her at ease and informed she and I that no…she did not have any cavities, they were the same spots we had always been watching, and there were no procedures necessary. He also showed me the xrays as proof.

My daughter is 11 y/o now, has only one baby tooth left, and hasn’t needed a single filling. She still smiles when she goes into see Dr. Crippen and the staff and comes out smiling. When they’ve told her things she needed to work on to keep her dental hygiene up, especially when she had braces, she listened and worked hard to get things back up to par. And my son, he enjoys going there too!

So, if you want a great dental office with an honest dentist who cares about his patients emotional and dental health and a friendly, very competent staff who’s great with kids and parents, then this is the place you want to go if you’re in the Sacramento area!