Brushing your teeth at home is a great start to your dental hygiene care, but it’s not enough on its own. Even for those who brush their teeth after every meal, there are additional steps to maintain a clean, healthy smile. Professional dental cleanings are a necessary part of dental care that patients can’t afford to ignore. During these appointments, a professional will assess your smile and thoroughly clean it, reaching areas you can’t reach on your own. Without the various types of dental cleanings we offer, patients like you would likely experience problems like tooth decay, staining, and gum disease more frequently.
Understanding Routine Dental Cleanings
During routine dental visits, professional dentists like those at East Longmeadow Family Dental Center provide routine cleanings.
Unlike regular brushing of your teeth, we use special tools to scrape the plaque buildup from your enamel. If left there, plaque hardens into tartar, which is much more difficult to brush off. During a professional cleaning, we scrape off tartar to clear your teeth of excess bacteria and build-up.
Additionally, we use these cleanings as a way to assess your smile and identify early signs of gum disease. Early gum disease, or gingivitis, is incredibly difficult to detect on your own. The symptoms of gingivitis are subtle, and there is typically no pain to alert you.
Without routine dental cleanings, you may miss these signs, allowing gingivitis to advance into a more serious gum infection. But with routine visits at least twice a year, we clean your smile of harmful bacteria to keep it healthy for years to come.
Other Types of Dental Cleanings
General cleanings aren’t the only type of dental cleanings we offer here at East Longmeadow Family Dental Center.
We also offer deep cleanings for those with extensive decay and bacterial buildup. Most commonly, we use these cleanings for patients experiencing gum disease.
Without prompt treatment, the later stages of gum disease, or periodontitis, will cause irreversible damage. Eventually, your gums and bone tissue will begin to deteriorate, potentially causing you to lose teeth. Only deep cleanings and other treatment methods can stop the spread of infection.
To treat gum disease with dental cleanings, we typically perform scaling and root planing.
Scaling
Scaling is similar to a regular dental cleaning, as we scrape off all signs of bacteria and tartar. However, this process is a little more invasive. Using specialized dental tools, we will reach below your gums to remove bacterial buildup.
Gum disease typically reaches far below your gums, creating large pockets where the gum tissue separates from your teeth. These pockets fill with bacteria, creating a breeding ground for disease and inflammation.
With scaling treatment, we can remove plaque buildup and flush out bacteria from your gum pockets.
Root Planing
After removing all signs of infection below and above the gum line, we then perform root planing treatment.
Your tooth roots are the bottom portion of teeth, typically hidden below the gum line. But when gum disease strikes, your gums pull away from your teeth, exposing your roots to the elements and bacteria.
Root planing involves smoothing tooth roots with special dental tools. This smoothing process helps create a sleek surface that can more easily reattach to gum tissue.
With scaling and root planing, we reduce the depth of your gum pockets and make it more difficult for bacteria to re-enter and infect that area.
Get All Types of Dental Cleanings at East Longmeadow Family Dental Center
To care for your teeth, you need to brush at least twice a day, floss regularly, and attend routine dental visits. By skipping any of these steps, you risk exposing your smile to an increased risk of bacterial buildup or gum disease. Routine dental visits occur just twice a year, and are a great, minimally invasive way to keep your smile healthy.
But without routine cleanings, you may need other types of dental cleanings that are much more intense. To prevent the need for scaling and root planing, be sure to care for your smile the right way.
Book a dental cleaning at East Longmeadow Family Dental Center in Massachusetts today!
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