Maintaining your oral health is important when you want to keep tartar, plaque, and stains away. Having annual dental exams and biannual teeth cleanings with your dentist in Portage, MI at Wester Dental Care is imperative to ensuring your oral health remains at its best. Dr. Jennifer Sarantos and Dr. Keith Wester will look for signs of tooth decay and remove food particles, plaque, and tartar from the mouth. A teeth cleaning is a proven way to ensure both your overall health and oral health remain intact.
What Happens During a Teeth Cleaning?
During teeth cleaning your doctors create a customized treatment plan for each patient depending on their findings during their dental exam. Teeth cleanings are comprehensive and can include the following:
- Medical History: We will want to learn about your general health, any medications or supplements you take, and any prior oral health issues or surgeries you have had.
- Dental exam and X-rays: Dental exams are generally conducted once a year, at every other dental cleaning at Wester Dental Care. These exams give us the chance to evaluate your teeth, gums, bite, and jaw. We will also take X-rays that offer us important information on what’s going on in areas that we cannot see with the naked eye. This can include problems with dental restorations, jaw issues, or deep tooth decay. We also perform an oral cancer screening where we look for precancerous or cancerous tumors, lesions, or masses. Early detection is important when it comes to oral cancer.
- Prophylaxis: Much of your routine dental cleaning will involve removing plaque and tartar. When there’s plaque and tartar in your mouth, it invites bacteria to live and produces acids in the mouth that will significantly damage your teeth and gums. We will scale these materials from your teeth to help reduce your risk of tooth decay. We can also polish surface stains on your teeth.
- Gum disease evaluation: We will look for signs of gum disease while recording periodontal measures of the spaces between the teeth and gums. We use these measurements to compare progress at each teeth cleaning to determine if your gum health is either improving or worsening.
How Often Should I Get a Teeth Cleaning?
We recommend getting a tooth cleaning from your dentist in Portage, MI, at least twice a year. For patients with gum disease or other oral health problems, more frequent routine dental cleanings are necessary.
Does a Teeth Cleaning Hurt?
Honestly, it shouldn’t. However, if you have tooth decay or gum disease symptoms such as gum inflammation, there may be increased tooth sensitivity. Tell us if you’re experiencing pain or discomfort as we can offer you a medicated gel or prescription rinse that will help make your cleaning more comfortable.
Schedule Your Routine Teeth Cleaning Today
Maintaining your teeth and gums with annual routine dental exams and routine dental cleanings is important when you want to look and feel your best, Dr. Sarantos and Dr. Wester work diligently to help improve their patients’ lives with superior dental care services. To schedule routine teeth cleaning with your dentist in Portage, MI, call us at (269) 327-1119.