Crestview Dental Associates
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Office News
Our goal is to develop a strong partnership with every patient. When you understand the importance of your dental health, we can help you maintain a healthy mouth, as well as treat the causes and symptoms of any dental condition.
We invite you to read our latest SmileLink newsletter and to check out our website often for new information, or contact our office with any questions or concerns. Working together, we can help you achieve a lifetime of healthy and attractive teeth and gums.
Featured Article |
SmileLink Articles |
Give Plaque the Brushoff!
Removing plaque from your teeth needn’t be a laborious chore, because new toothbrush designs give you many choices to make cleaning your teeth easier.
Plaque (an oral biofilm) is made up of food debris and decay-causing bacteria and is encased in a tough shell that sticks tightly to your teeth. Once plaque is attached, it is incredibly resistant to removal.
There are two types of toothbrushes: manual, electric (power). The power brushes are available in two types: oscillating and sonic. All can remove plaque when they are well-designed and properly used.
The older style manual toothbrush and the traditional method of brushing your teeth is the least effective way to remove plaque because you need nimble fingers, excellent technique and a timer.
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Billiard Pockets
Deep pockets are good when you play billiards or need to borrow a large sum of money, but they're not something you want around your teeth.
When you have healthy gingiva, or gums, the gingiva are firm and fit snugly against your teeth except for a tiny space at the top of the gingiva. It's that tiny space, or sulcus, that your hygienist and I want you to floss and brush.
Bacteria in the sulcus quickly multiply, which causes the gingiva to pull away from the sides of your teeth and to form those deep billiard pockets, or perio pockets, as we'll call them. When you get perio pockets, most likely your teeth have developed periodontal disease, or "perio." Perio is a serious condition that has the potential of causing you to lose a tooth...and much more.
Perio is sneaky. It begins between your teeth where you can't see it, and unfortunately, it is typically painless; so, you can't feel it, either.
When you come in for your check-ups, your hygienist examines your gingiva and uses a periodontal probe to measure how deep each gingival sulcus is. Healthy gingiva are pink and don't bleed when they are probed. If the gingiva is swollen and red and the sulcus is over 4 mm deep, your gingiva likely will bleed, indicating that you might have perio.
So, if you missed your regular cleanings, and then we see the telltale signs of perio during your latest checkup, we need to act fast to preserve your health.
We first try to ...