McDowell Mountain Ranch Dentistry: Scaling and Root Planing

McDowell Mountain Ranch Dentistry

At Mcdowell Mountain Ranch, we are a dental practice devoted to restoring and enhancing the natural beauty of your smile using conservative State-of-the-Art procedures that will result in beautiful long lasting smiles.

We build a foundation of trust by treating our patients as special individuals because we understand how uneasy some patients feel about dental visits. We are dedicated to making a difference in prioritizing a relaxing & positive experience. Our standard of excellence in personalized care enables us to provide the quality dental services our patients deserve. We provide comprehensive treatment planning and use Restorative & Cosmetic Dentistry to achieve your optimal dental health. Should a dental emergency occur, we make every effort to see and care of you as quickly as possible.

We are a team of highly skilled and trained clinicians and pride ourselves in providing the extra care you need to keep your healthy smile. We are not only committed to Continuing Education & Learning to our patients, but to the community as well. Make an appointment today and we'll give you a reason to smile!

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Scaling and Root Planing

When you went in to your dentist, have you ever been told that you need a "deeper cleaning"? If so, did you understand what it is, why you need it, and what it involves? The term we commonly refer to is SRP's, short for Scaling and Root Planing. If you need scaling and root planing, you have periodontal disease which you can read more about on our blog as well. Scaling and Root planing is how we treat periodontal disease to ensure that you keep your teeth.

Scaling: a procedure that meticulously removes contaminations, plaque, and tartar that is around, below and under the gum line down to the bottom of the pocket.

Root Planing: involves cleaning and smoothing the root surfaces of your teeth so gum tissue can more firmly attach to the roots that are clean and smooth.

At your appointment, our registered dental hygienists use a periodontal probe, it is not as scary as it sounds, to measure the gum and bone levels in your mouth. 1-3 millimeters is healthy, 4 millimeters is considered gingivitis, the beginning of periodontal disease, and 5 millimeters and higher is periodontal disease. We then diagnose what teeth need to have a deeper cleaning done on them based on the readings and the x-rays we take. We treat the disease with Scaling and Root Planing and many times we also place an antibiotic to kill the infection while the gums are healing after this procedure. We then place you on a 3-4 month cleaning schedule to ensure that we help you keep your mouth clean and healthy from then on. When you brush and floss at home, you are only able to clean as deep as 3 millimeters and we have special instruments to go deeper which is why we want you to come in sooner than every 6 months if you have periodontal disease.