A lot of people ask, why do I need dental check-ups to begin with? Some people don't think it's necessary. Dental check-ups are very important for people who want to keep their teeth their whole life. One of the most important things, everybody familiar with dental check-ups understands that they usually get their teeth cleaned at one of those visits. A lot of those visits, they might get x-rays. But the most important thing is coming in for dental check-ups on a regular frequency, somewhere between two and four times a year, depending on the patient's needs. It allows us to identify what are you doing well, and what needs improvement. Our goal is to prevent disease. The second goal is when we fail to prevent disease and we're starting to have some disease form, we want to catch it at its earliest possible stage so we can be as conservative as possible, minimize any discomfort, or risk losing future teeth due to a variety of diseases that might go unchecked if you don't come in for those visits.
How often you need to get a dental check-up depends on your situation. So it starts with an initial evaluation to find out what's going on with you. For people who struggle with gum disease or gum health, the reality is some people are more prone to that disease than others because of the bugs they inherited from their parents. Bugs means bacteria. But those are the little no-see-ums that are in everybody's mouth that determine whether or not you're at high risk for gum disease or high risk for decay. We typically know whether you are or you are not based on your history of disease and your current situation. So some people who struggle with disease might need to be seen four times a year in general. For other people who don't struggle with disease activity and just want to stay ahead of the curve, we usually recommend seeing them twice a year.
Dental check-ups can prevent oral health issues. The way that's happening is that we can identify what are you doing well, what are you not doing well, and what you need to work on. If you're leaving plaque and sugar and food debris at the gum line or between your teeth, if we see you regularly, we can determine if things are going south. We can determine if are we starting to see damage to the enamel? Are we starting to see bleeding gums? Are we actively seeing a build-up of plaque and tartar? All those things are important things to know as a patient so that we can give you some guidance on how to correct that problem or that deficiency and help set you up for success if you go home and use the information we gave you to make your situation better.
So what's included in a dental check-up? Most of the time when you come in, you're going to come in, have an evaluation, have x-rays. In our office, we take X-rays typically once a year unless we see a need to take them more often. We'll also check the health of your gums and measure the pocket depth around every tooth. So we can check for pocket depth. We can check for bleeding and all the factors that help us diagnose your current condition, and then we make recommendations from there. And then we give the type of cleaning that's appropriate for your condition. If other cavities and other problems is going on that we discover, then we'll put a plan together. That's part of that check-up visit, too. Anything that has gotten unhealthy, we put a plan together to bring it back to health.
What does a dentist do during a dental check-up? A lot of the visit is going to be with the dental hygienist. But when the dentist comes in, he's going to look at or she is going to look at the x-rays. We're going to evaluate the probing depths or the measurements of the gums around every tooth and determine what's going on and what's your current situation. We're going to create a diagnosis for your current state. Hopefully, it's a healthy diagnosis. Many times, there's some level of disease activity with the gums. Many times, there's old, failing dentistry that needs to be updated, teeth that have fracture lines, some teeth that are already broken, and some cavities. We're looking for all those things. We want to evaluate the bone levels around your teeth. All those things are important to determine whether or not you're in a state of health or whether you're in a state of decline that we need to help you get back to health. Keep your overall health in good check. Everybody knows or a lot of people know that there is a connection between the health of the mouth and the health of your body. We can't overlook that important fact, and we want to keep you healthy overall. But we also want to help you have a confident, beautiful smile that you're happy to show off and help you keep your teeth as long as you need them.
Some people ask me, do dental checkups hurt? A dental checkup does not hurt. Some people have bone formations in their mouths that can make X-rays a little uncomfortable. Our hygienists at Village Dental Care are wonderful at working around those things, and they look for those things to make sure that we're keeping you as comfortable as possible during those X-rays. The gum probing and things like that where we measure the depth of the gums, can be a little uncomfortable if your gums are not healthy. Another piece of evidence on whether or not you're in a good state of health or not is how comfortable that process is for you. But even for those people who are tender and sensitive, we go above and beyond to try to keep that process comfortable. There are a lot of ways to do that, and we make that a priority in our office.
Normally, the dental check-up visit is about an hour, including the cleaning, if you don't need X-rays on that visit. In our office, once a year we take X-rays, and once a year we measure the gum. We're always evaluating those things, but we take the official measurements once a year. Unless you have a history of gum disease and you're coming in four times a year, those patients, we measure the gums every visit. So if you're here four times a year, we measure the gums four times in that year. X-rays typically, again, we take once a year, and all that time together typically takes about an hour.
I hope this information has been helpful for you and answered a lot of your questions about dental check-ups. If you have any further questions, please give our office a call at (972) 931-7114 or visit us on the web at www.villagedentalcaredallas.com. Thanks for listening.
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