By Suzanne Harris, Dental Hygienist.
If you have been reading a number of these articles you’ll be aware that here at Ferring Dental Practice we are passionate about good oral health and the importance of gum health as well as you having good looking healthy teeth. One of our hygienists has written the following article introducing a new service that we are providing for people who are not currently member of the practice but want access to our high standards of hygienist care.
‘We are making it easier to get hygiene appointments for everyone!
Our practices will soon be offering direct access hygienist appointments, this means anyone can have a hygiene appointment whether they have seen a dentist or not, you can simply call and book an appointment – making it much simpler to maintain healthy gums for everyone!
What you need to know about our hygienists.
We love taking care of you! Oral health is so important but leaving plaque behind on teeth and gums results in bleeding gums: ‘gingivitis’. These early stages can cause bad breath, discoloration of the teeth and bleeding when brushing.
Simply visiting your dental hygienist regularly and maintaining good oral hygiene at home you can prevent all of this from happening!
Ignoring bleeding gums and removal of plaque means that the plaque will turn hard to calculus and irritate the gums even further, at this point the gums may detach from the teeth and causes pockets, this can result in bone loss around a tooth root: ‘periodontitis’. These symptoms are often painless so they may go unnoticed without visiting your hygienist!
When we do get pain related to the gum disease, it may be due to abscesses and mobile teeth and it’s often too late to save teeth, so don’t let it get to this stage.
The bacteria in plaque can trigger inflammation in the body, which can contribute to the development or worsening of systemic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. This is why we always take an extensive medical history from our patients.
Medication can affect our gums so we need to know what you are taking so we can have an understanding if there are any obvious signs and we can inform you.
Post surgery joint replacements and specific cardio conditions often require the need of antibiotic cover for hygiene appointments or a delayed time period due to the fact that bacteria can enter the bloodstream whilst scaling so we need to protect our patients. This is why letting us know anything related to your medical history is so important.
What can you expect at your appointment?
At our routine hygiene appointments, we will be carrying out –
- Full medical history update
- Oral cancer checks
- Plaque & bleeding scores which are converted to a percentage so you can understand how well you are doing
- Oral hygiene instruction with manual or electric toothbrushing techniques and the use of interdental brushes and flossing
- Guided Biofilm therapy (GBT)treatment, this is the removal of the biofilm layer which is the layer that bacterial plaque adheres to.( This procedure is also dependent on the patient’s medical history.)
- Ultrasonic & Hand scaling to remove the calculus.
- Full mouth polish
- Fluoride mouth rinse
- Advice on when next appointment to be arranged, depending on the status of your oral health.
We are now offering to everyone, whether they are a member of the practice or not, dental hygiene appointments as we believe prevention is so important.
Give us a call on 01903 246858 and secure a direct access hygiene appointment.