Dental Hygiene
Learn more about Digital X-Rays, Oral Cancer Screening, and Digital Diagnosis
A dental cleaning is a professional cleaning you receive from a dentist or dental hygienist. Cleanings should be performed every three to six months to prevent excessive tartar buildup. Plaque and tartar left untreated can lead to unhealthy gums and tooth decay.
A routine dental cleaning at the office includes scaling, polishing, oral cancer screening and oral bacterial screening to determine each patient’s susceptibility to periodontal disease and dental decay.
Scaling: This is the process of removing plaque and tartar from all tooth surfaces in a variety of methods. Scaling is traditionally performed by hand. However, new and advanced technology has lead to more modern methods such as ultrasonic scalers and lasers. These sophisticated tools allow dental cleanings to be performed more effectively and in less time.
X-rays are a focused beam of x-ray particles passed through bone, which produces an image on a special film, showing the structure through which it has passed. This provides the familiar black and white images physicians and dentists use to diagnose problems and disease. Without an x-ray of the whole tooth, supporting bone, and gum tissues; there would be no way to detect infection or pathology that requires attention.
In our office we use digital radiography which allows us to take x-rays with up to 90% less radiation than conventional film x-rays. Using this technology, we are able to take an x-ray of your mouth by using a small sensor, which records the image of your teeth and instantly sends it to a computer. The result is a highly detailed image of your mouth that can easily be enhanced, to better diagnose dental concerns and determine the very best treatment for each case.
- Oral cancer has 3 times as many victims as cervical cancer.
- One North American dies of oral cancer every hour of every day.
- The biggest growth in oral cancer is among non-smokers and the main cause is HPV.
We provide a two-step process to screen patients annually during your routine cleanings:
Step 1: the “white light” exam. The first step is a conventional “white light” exam in which the dentist or hygienist looks for lesions in the oral cavity with the naked eye and uses palpation to feel for any bumps in the neck or face. This generally takes about 3 minutes.
Step 2: the VELscope™ exam. The VELscope™ handpiece emits a safe blue light into the oral cavity, causing tissue fluorescence from the surface of the epithelium through to the basement membrane, where pre-malignant changes typically start, and in the stroma beneath. The special, patented optical filtering in the handpiece allows the clinician to immediately view the different fluorescence signatures from the oral tissue to help differentiate between normal and abnormal tissue. Abnormal tissue, such as dysplasia or cancerous lesions, typically appear as irregular, dark areas that stand out against the otherwise normal, green fluorescence pattern of surrounding healthy tissue. This technology thus helps dental practitioners identify potentially dangerous growths that might have been missed with the naked eye, yet this exam takes only 2-to-3 minutes.
For more information on oral cancer please visit The Oral Cancer Foundation
In addition to a traditional exam our office uses state-of-the-art LED technology to detect cavities. The Midwest Caries I.D.™ is able to identify significantly more caries than traditional radiographs. In fact, clinical studies have shown that the Midwest Caries I.D.™ is 80% accurate at detecting interproximal caries and 92% accurate at detecting occlusal caries. Compare these numbers with 50% and 39% for traditional radiograph detection and it’s easy to see how the Midwest Caries I.D.™ can dramatically improve our ability to detect caries in posterior teeth.