New Patient Hygiene Visit

Most of our returning patients prefer to have their gums and teeth cleaned and reassessed by our hygienist on the day of their regular six monthly exam. For our new patients, however, this is not always a possibility. The reason behind this is that your gums need to be evaluated before we know what kind of hygiene treatment you need: this may just be stain removal and minimal scaling of your teeth and gums or it may be a deep scaling of heavy calculus (tartar) and stain, which requires a longer appointment and possibly even multiple hygiene visits. You will have a better understanding of what kind of hygiene visit you require once you have met with our dentist for a New Patient Examination. Your hygiene visit can then be scheduled accordingly.

Returning Patients’ Continuing Preventative Care

If you are one of our regular patients, who return one, three, four or six-monthtly for their reviews, your continuing preventive care visits will be scheduled with our hygienist, who will scale your teeth and gums and review healing and gum health. She will review your home care instructions, apply tooth mousse or desensitizing agent on your teeth, if necessary and discuss your diet and level of risk of decay or gum disease.  Our dentist will then see you for a review examination and discussion on any treatment necessary. If you require a more detailed discussion on your treatment, you may return for an additional meeting with our dentist, to discuss treatment, time involved, fees, outcomes and financial arrangements.

CONTINUING PREVENTATIVE CARE (Recall appointments)

Continuing care appointments are essential for maintaining health. Tooth decay (caries) and gum disease (gingivitis and more serious, periodontitis) can start long before any pain or loss of tooth or gum structure occurs. Dentists are trained to recognize early signs of decay, tooth wear and gum disease and can treat these before they seriously undermine your health.
Most people will only require six monthly continuing preventive care. People who carry higher risks of developing dental or gum disease may be advised to return sooner – within three months or less. This may mean that we need to assess whether teeth or gums are responding to treatment. Alternatively, we may want to determine the predominant factors that influence your condition – is it your home care, diet or other health problems that make you especially vulnerable to dental disease. You may be advised to keep a diary of the foods you eat over a certain period of time, to enable us to better assess your risk of disease.

RADIOGRAPHS (X-ray films)

Radiographs (Xray films) of your teeth are required on a regular basis, to assess for early signs of disease. These early signs are invisible to the dentist’s eye, no matter how skilled and experienced the dentist may be. Radiographs may discover problems with your teeth, including wisdom teeth, and supporting structures.
Frequency of radiographs is determined by the estimated risk of disease. If you have had a lot of dental work in the past or have had a cavity or a toothache in the past year, you are likely to require yearly radiographs until you are “disease-free” for two consecutive years. If you have not had much dental work and your teeth have been pain and cavity-free for over a year, you are likely to require radiographs two-yearly.
Modern radiographs use minimal Xray exposure times. It is a widely accepted opinion that it is better to have radiographs as advised by the dentist than to end up losing a tooth due to advanced disease.

NIGHT GUARDS AND TOOTH GRINDING

A large number of people clench and grind their teeth. This is mostly a subconscious habit and people do it when they are concentrating or sleeping. It is a difficult habit to control consciously and can cause fracture and heavy wear even of sound teeth. While it is not always possible to ‘cure’ this habit, we can prevent damage to your teeth by constructing a custom made nightguard for your teeth. This is a clear plastic platform, made to fit into grooves, gaps and undercuts of your teeth, so it does not fall out while you sleep