Why are dental exams and cleanings recommended?
So it's always good to try and stay as healthy as possible. We all know that. We want things to be as healthy as they can, and a big part of that is keeping your mouth healthy. Now, I'm sure most of you know about the importance of brushing and flossing at home, the importance of eating right, making sure you have a good, healthy diet with not too much sugar. But a lot of times, even if you're good about doing all those things, sometimes there's still things that can escape your notice, that can be going on in your mouth and you have no idea. So that's where dental exams and cleaning come into play.
What's included in a dental exam?
So here at Crown Dentistry, when we do dental exams, there are several things that we do. We almost always like to pair our dental exams with x-rays and photos of some sort. The x-rays because there's a lot that's going on underneath the surface of your gums and your teeth that you can't see and neither can we. And x-rays go a long way in trying to give us the most complete picture of what's going on in your mouth. Photos, we take that just because it's really good to communicate to you as a patient what's going on in your mouth and most people have never seen what their teeth and gums look like up close and intraoral photos help us do that. They help us to basically show you what we're seeing. And then like we said, a lot of times we like to also pair your exams with a tooth cleaning just because it's always good to try and get your gums and teeth as healthy as possible. Try and clear out as much of the oral bacteria that's already there as possible. A few other things that we like to also include are an oral cancer check. We like to check your lips, your cheeks, your tongue just to make sure there's no signs of oral cancer and we also check your gums which is called periodontal probing. You do that to basically determine if you have gum disease or not, hopefully not.
What type of recommendations might come from a dental exam?
So one of the biggest and most obvious things that we check for in dental exams are are your teeth healthy? Do you have cavities? We also check the gums to make sure there's no gum disease present. As I was mentioning earlier, x-rays are important because we want to know if your teeth are healthy below the gums as well as above the gums. We can check and see above the gums like if there's any broken teeth or teeth that have cavities in them but without the x-rays we can't tell sometimes if everything is healthy underneath the gums. Sometimes infections in teeth will come up and the only way we can see them is through x-rays.
How long does a full dental exam take?
I would say by and large a full dental exam, if you include x-rays and photos, takes about 50 minutes to one hour. So a lot of times that's the time that we like to allot for our patients in order to make sure that we're getting a complete picture of what's going on in your mouth.
Are dental exams painful?
For the most part dental exams are not painful. I will say that sometimes if your gums are infected, sometimes checking them can be a little uncomfortable but we do our best with topical analgesics and just little gels or creams to try and numb the area so it's not too uncomfortable for you.
How can I schedule a dental exam?
If you haven't had your teeth cleaned in a while or if you haven't had your teeth checked in a while, I would say that the time to get a dental exam is right now. So if you can, please give our office a call or check us out on our website. Thanks so much for checking us out today. If you have any other questions about dental exams, we're here to help. Our office number is (916) 848-2145 or our website is www.crowndentistry.net. See you soon.