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In addition to performing diligent oral care at home, you should see your dentist every six months for an oral exam to ensure continued health of your teeth and gums. If you skip just one routine checkup with your dentist, any new oral health issues can rapidly advance and require expensive and invasive treatments.
Regular checkups ensure that problems can be caught early and treated conservatively, and some oral health issues can even be reversed if spotted in the earliest stages. If allowed to advance, however, these problems with your teeth or gums can actually spread beyond your mouth and affect your general health.
Dental X-rays are useful for viewing jawbones and various tooth structures. They can find and image cavities, bone or gum loss, periodontal disease, benign or malignant tumors, and other normal or abnormal structures within the lower portion of the head. In children and adolescents, they are also useful for finding un-erupted permanent teeth and imaging root structures in preparation for orthodontic work. Although dental X-rays use radiation to achieve light-dark contrasts, they are not dangerous when used occasionally. During a typical X-ray session, a patient receives about as much radiation exposure as he or she would on a five-hour airplane flight. Lead shields and collars further reduce these exposure levels.
Just as pediatricians specialize in health care for children, pediatric dentistry refers to children’s dental care. Sometimes called pedodontics, pediatric dentistry starts even before a child’s first teeth appear. Your child’s dentist can assess oral health and ensure that new teeth grow normally. Early dental visits also teach children about proper oral hygiene from a young age and foster good dental habits. Kids who learn early that dental visits are neither painful nor unpleasant generally grow into adults who feel comfortable with regular dental upkeep.
Your oral health depends on two factors: your willingness to brush and floss regularly and your commitment to seeing your dentist every six months for an oral exam and professional teeth cleaning. You may wonder why you need to visit the dental professional so often if you are taking great care of your teeth and gums on your own, but even the most diligent patients can miss hard-to-reach areas of the mouth and leave themselves vulnerable to tooth decay and periodontal disease. Your six-month oral exam will ensure that your dentist spots any problems early in their development, but professional teeth cleaning may prevent those oral health issues, the most devastating of which is periodontal disease, all together.
Dental fillings replace parts of a tooth that has been damaged due to injury or decay. Also known as dental restoration, a filling preserves the integrity of the tooth and prevents further damage from cavities. Fillings can also restore the chewing surfaces of teeth that have become worn. Avoiding damage from decay or injury is preferable, but fillings are a good way to prevent the eventual loss of a tooth. Most cavities and fractures that are caught early are good candidates for restoration with fillings.
Dental crowns, also called caps, fit over worn or damaged teeth. They can also serve a cosmetic purpose, restoring a discolored tooth to its former hue. Your dentist may fit you with a temporary crown to protect a damaged tooth while the permanent crown is being made. Depending on the material used to make them, the wear they get and the care they receive, permanent crowns last about 5 to 15 years.
A dental bridge spans the gap where a missing tooth once was, filling the space with a synthetic tooth. Like a bridge over a river, most dental bridges need support at either end, although cantilever bridges are an exception. Fitting a bridge requires reshaping the abutment teeth and capping them with crowns to hold the bridge securely.