Did you hear that you might need a deep teeth cleaning?
Here’s why you need it, and why it’s different from a routine teeth cleaning.
Not all teeth cleanings are the same. When you visit for a routine teeth cleaning, this cleaning focuses on maintaining the cleanliness of your teeth to prevent cavities and keep your gums disease free. This cleaning works on the surfaces of your teeth, and the top of your gum line.
A deep cleaning concentrates on scrubbing out bacteria deposits and built-up tartar that have already crept underneath your gums and into the roots of your teeth. BTW tartar is the hard by-product of plaque build up that adheres to your teeth. Plaque and tartar are the primary causes of gum disease.
Who Needs a Deep Cleaning?
A deep cleaning is usually recommended for someone who hasn’t had their teeth professionally cleaned in a while. Teeth cleanings are the most effective way to scrub off tartar, but if it’s been a while since you’ve had your teeth cleaned, chances are good that quite a bit of tartar has built up on your teeth, and it has crept into the roots of your teeth too. Deep Cleanings may also be suggested for patients who are at risk for gum disease, or already have it, or have other existing periodontal (gum) issues.
Controlling Gum Disease Keeps You Healthy!
48 short hours. That’s all the time it takes for plaque to become tartar. As tartar adheres to your teeth and builds up, it will eventually creep into your gumline. This causes an inflammation of your gums, which symptoms such as redness, bleeding and sensitivity.
If the inflammation is not effectively treated, the gums start to pull away from the teeth, creating a spaces or “pockets”, which allows for more plaque and tartar to collect.
While the tooth’s enamel protects the tooth, the bone and tissue supporting it have little protection. They are susceptible to infection, damage and tooth loss. Besides damaging your oral health, the bacteria from gum disease is also linked to other serious health issues – heart disease or strokes, diabetes, cancer or even Alzheimer’s.
The Deep Cleaning Treatment – How it Works
It is “deep”, because it literally does go below the surface of an ordinary routine teeth cleaning. But the official dental term for a deep cleaning is periodontal scaling and root planing. Here’s how it works.
Deep scaling is done beneath the gum line to remove tartar (through manual scraping) from the teeth using a dental scaler. It involves the use of an ultrasonic device to remove plaque from the teeth surface. This part of the cleaning is designed to remove significantly more plaque, bacteria, and tartar deposits from both the outer surfaces of teeth and their roots in the gumline.
Next up, is root planing, which is the repeated rubbing motion applied on the roots of the teeth to remove any rough spots that can promote gum infections by trapping and storing bacteria. This stage is vital to keeping your gums clean and healthy, while also promoting the reattachment of the gums to the teeth, and reducing the space between the teeth and gums too.
The goal of a deep cleaning is to treat gum disease, prevent it from worsening and hopefully eliminate having any surgery or other extensive procedures down the road.
Depending on the extent of the deep cleaning and your comfort level, we may recommend numbing your gums with a local anesthetic or with nitrous oxide. Your cleaning will also most likely be broken up into two visits to ensure that we have enough time to treat each affected area.
Following a deep cleaning, we usually recommend quarterly routine cleanings to control the tartar and keep an eye on your gums. But this frequency various from patient to patient, as well as the extent of any gum disease.
Deep Cleanings Can Prevent or Reduce Gum Disease
Keeping the plaque and tartar in your mouth in check, and your gums healthy isn’t an easy job. 85% of adults already have gum disease, or are at risk of getting it. The good news is that it can be prevented, treated, and maintained. Fortunately, staying on top of teeth cleanings is your best weapon to keep this stuff off your teeth and keep your gums healthy.
You’d be surprised how quickly the health of your teeth can change for the better when you maintain regular dental visits.
If you’re overdue for teeth cleaning, or it’s been a while since you’ve last visited a dentist, please reach out to schedule an appointment. Please call us at (206) 524-1000 or request an appointment online! We’ll do are best to keep your teeth healthy, and screen for gum disease. And should you be at- risk, or already have gum disease, we’ll develop a treatment plan to reduce it, or halt it altogether.