The Importance of Regular Dental Hygiene Appointments
The most important thing to us at Greenboro Dental is ensuring the comfort of our patients during their visits. As trained oral healthcare experts, our team prides themselves on identifying potential problems before they become major headaches for patients and result in dental emergencies. While some dental emergencies are completely unavoidable (especially living in Canada with hockey as our favourite past time), wouldn’t it better to not wake up at 3AM on a Monday before a critical work meeting in complete agony and unable to sleep?
The goal of dental hygiene visits is to restore the teeth and gums to health by getting rid of all the unwanted plaque and bacteria that accumulate between visits. That’s why for most patients we recommend coming every 6 months for routine maintenance as research shows that for most people that’s the average time it takes for plaque and other bacteria to accumulate on teeth to a level that won’t be removed by brushing, flossing, mouthwash, or any other home ‘cleaning’ methods. On the other hand, our expert team of hygienists utilizing specialized dental instruments are able to get this stubborn plaque and bacteria off! Remember…’cleaning’ is what you can do at home to maintain your beautiful smile through brushing, flossing etc while dental hygiene appointments are your visits with the pros and what you come to the dentist to maintain and improve your oral health.
We also regularly take the blood pressure of our patients and take a comprehensive medical history that we regularly update for changes. For a lot of our patients, they actually visit us more than they do their family doctor and being healthcare providers we help to ensure our patients are aware of potential issues that may be affecting their overall health such as high blood pressure that has gone undiagnosed. Remember, the mouth is the gateway to the rest of the body and changes or conditions happening elsewhere may be affecting your mouth and teeth and vice versa!
The other benefit of coming regularly for dental hygiene visits and checkups is to identify issues and provide options for solving them BEFORE they become the ticking time bomb waiting to ruin your week. I can’t count how many times patients say that they were eating a piece of toast before their tooth broke on them and they rushed to make an emergency appointment at our clinic. The toast in this example is the straw the broke the camel’s back as 99% of the time there was already a structural defect present in the tooth before the pesky piece of bread caused a big hole. Sometimes, the deadly toast is unavoidable…but a lot of the times it can be detected if you visit regularly and share changes you’ve noticed with us. Remember, your appointments at Greenboro Dental are a collaboration between us and you (the patient)!
By updating us on things you may be feeling around your mouth since your last visit such as sensitive teeth that maybe weren’t sensitive before or sensitivity when eating certain foods, it helps us know what areas to do some extra investigation into and see what could be causing these new unpleasant sensations. This combined with our personalized medical history reviews, periodontal charting (gum measurements), dental radiographs (x-rays), and intra and extra-oral examinations help to paint a big picture and form a working picture of what’s going on for each patient. While most of the times (especially for patients who come regularly) it’s a big thumbs up and nothing to report, but when there is something brewing wouldn’t it be great to know what can be done for something before it wakes you up hours before your big work meeting?
