Maintaining optimal oral health involves more than just a solid at-home dental care routine. As vitally important as twice-daily brushing and flossing is, it cannot replace the long-term preventive and corrective benefits of regular professional cleanings by a dentist or dental hygienist.
This comprehensive exploration will delve into professional dental cleanings, highlighting their importance, dissecting the distinctions between regular and deep cleanings, and examining the circumstances that might lead a person to each option.
The Importance of Regular Dental Visits
Regular dental checkups are one of the cornerstones of preventive oral care. These seemingly routine appointments are crucial first and foremost because they allow your dentist to periodically perform comprehensive assessments to determine the state of your overall oral health. They also offer regular opportunities for your dentist to highlight risk factors and easily and painlessly address a wide range of potentially serious issues in their early stages.
In addition to this comprehensive examination, a routine visit to the dentist also involves a thorough cleaning to remove any built-up plaque and tartar from your gumline and the surfaces of your teeth. These professional cleanings are vital to ensuring a bright smile, fresh breath, and a higher overall baseline for a person’s oral health.
What to Expect During a Teeth Cleaning and Oral Exam in Urbandale
During a routine dental exam and cleaning, there are a few key steps that you should expect. First, your dentist will thoroughly examine your head and neck to ensure the health of the muscles in your jaw, jawbone, and lymph nodes. After this examination, your dentist will take x-rays of your entire mouth to get a comprehensive sense of your oral health.
At this point, your dentist will fully examine the inside of your mouth, using a special mirror and tools to see and reach into all parts of your mouth, looking for cavities, loose fillings, cracked teeth, or early signs of gum disease or oral cancer.
It is now that the actual cleaning commences! Using a series of special tools, your dentist or a dental hygienist removes plaque and tartar from the surfaces of your teeth, between your teeth, and your gumline. Once this process is complete, you will probably also have your teeth polished to help prevent plaque and tartar buildup in the future.
Why Are Regular Teeth Cleanings So Important?
Here are a few of our top benefits of teeth cleanings to your oral and overall health:
- Dental cleanings allow your dentist to discover and quickly address plaque and tartar buildup that leads to cavities and tooth decay.
- Regular cleanings are a great weapon in the fight against gum disease. If undiagnosed or left untreated, gum disease can cause painful irritation, bleeding of the gums, receding gums, and, eventually, tooth loss.
- Every teeth cleaning and dental exam includes a check by your dentist for any potential signs of oral cancer. Vigilance and early detection are the keys to preventing and quickly curing oral cancer and ensuring it doesn’t spread.
- Dental cleanings also offer an opportunity for your dentist to assess the state of the bones and muscles in the jaw that allow us to bite and chew and ensure that they’re functioning properly. This is crucial because if a patient exhibits symptoms that suggest a serious issue in the temporomandibular joint (or TMJ) issues, early detection can lead to prompt and effective corrective action.
- Good oral health is closely connected to good overall health. In fact, oral health has been linked to cardiovascular health and a reduced risk of diabetes.
It is worth noting, of course, that dental cleanings are not one-size-fits-all and that some patients require a deep cleaning.
Regular and Deep Dental Cleanings: A Comparison
Regular dental cleanings, also known as prophylaxis, are routine preventive treatments aimed at maintaining and restoring a person’s oral health. Regular cleanings involve the removal of surface-level plaque and tartar and teeth polishing by a dentist or a dental hygienist.
A deep cleaning, on the other hand, is called for when there's a buildup of tartar below the gumline. This is usually an indicator of gum disease, characterized by persistent bleeding, inflammation, and pocket formation. Deep cleaning, or “scaling and root planing,” is a more complex procedure than a regular cleaning, as it involves the removal of tartar from above and below the gumline (scaling) and the smoothing of tooth roots to prevent further plaque buildup (root planing).
Several signs may indicate the necessity of a deep cleaning, including:
- Persistent bad breath
- Gums that are chronically red and swollen
- Bleeding of the gums during brushing or flossing
- Gum recession
Dental Deep Cleaning and Preventive Dentistry in Johnston and Urbandale, IA
If you’re in the Johnston and Urbandale areas and looking for a skilled and experienced dental team to help ensure your oral health through meticulous dental cleaning and a wide range of other preventive and corrective procedures, contact dentists Dr. Ellen Babor, Dr. Trung Phan, and the friendly team at Northpark Dental to schedule an appointment!