Periodic Checkups

To Maintain good oral health, you should have a periodic checkup at least every six months. For patients with high risk decay or severe gum disease, we recommend regular checkup every three months. At each checkup visit, we can:

• Exam oral health of your mouth to manage the early problems
• Detect early decay
• Assess gum problems
• Check old fillings and restorations

Periodic checkups usually include a thorough cleaning and polishing.

Preventive cleaning vs. deep cleaning

Preventive cleaning (prophylaxis) is conducted to remove any tartar, palque and most staining from the teeth to maintain your gum health and to improve your esthetics. Usaully you do not need local anesthesia because the deposits are on the crown or/and sallow tooth root surface below the gum line. If you have gum disease or gum pocketing, the gum pockets around the teeth will have deepened, thereby allowing tartar deposits to form under the gumline more than 3 mm. Deep cleaning (Scaling and root planning) is performed using a number of dental tools, including ultrasonic and hand instruments, to remove or eliminate the dental plaques and tartars which cause gum and bone inflammation. Usually this dental procedure need perform the local anesthesia because the deposits locate on the root surface deeper than regular cleaning. Root planing is the process of smoothening the root surfaces and removing any infected tooth structure. The two processes tend to blur together since during the cleaning process, the dental worker scales away tartar and performs any necessary root planing at the same time. Any roughness can be planed away to result in a silky smooth surface.

Precautions you should take after cleaning

If your gum has been numbed you will need to be careful with your chewing until the effects of the anesthetic have worn off, especially for children. It is very common you will feel teeth sensitive to cold and hot and gum sore when you finish your cleaning. It will be offset a couple of days later.