Periodontal Maintenance
 Maintenance sounds like a great word for keeping things clean and tidy. We are big fans of maintenance because if you have good maintenance, your house or your car remains in one piece. It is much the same way with periodontal maintenance. If you have had problems with gum disease in the past, periodontal maintenance will help keep your gums healthy. We can even make sure that periodontal maintenance is not painful or stressful. If you are not sure what periodontal maintenance is, keep reading. BayView Dental have information for you about the importance of periodontal maintenance.
Periodontal Maintenance
If you have a history of periodontal disease, you have probably been told you need periodontal maintenance. At some point in the past, you may have had a procedure that deep cleaned your gums because you had periodontal disease. That procedure called dental scaling and root planing, happened because your gums were infected and inflamed with bacteria. The bacteria caused your gum disease. Dental scaling and root planing cleaned out the infection from your gums and allowed your gums to heal.
However, while your gums are better than they were when they were infected, you need to have maintenance on your gums every three or four months. In fact, if you don’t have periodic maintenance, your gums could get re-infected. Besides brushing your teeth and gums, and flossing, periodontal maintenance is the next important step you need to take to keep your gums as healthy as possible.
Why Do I Have to Continue Maintenance?
You need to continue periodontal maintenance because of periodontal disease. This means that once you have periodontal disease (stage 2 or 3), it never goes away completely. Stage 1 of the disease is treatable and mild. If we catch it early, we can make it disappear. However, once the disease progresses to Stage 2, you will always have it. Over time, the periodontal disease creates pockets of infection in between your teeth and gums. Food gets stuck in those pockets, and they become ripe for infection. Because of the nature of gum disease, it is difficult to get infections out of those pockets through traditional methods.
We treat those pockets of infection when we do scaling and root planing. While the infection may be gone, the pockets between your teeth and gums remain.
You will need to get your teeth and gums cleaned out every three to four months so that your infection doesn’t come back. We will clean your teeth and gums and make sure there are no pockets of infection. With good treatment, we can make sure that your gums don’t continue to deteriorate from the infection.
Are you worried about your gums? Alternatively, are you worried that the treatment for your gums will be painful? Don’t worry. BayView Dental have ways of making your periodontal maintenance as painless as possible. Give us a call at one of our 7 convenient locations, and let us talk to you about how we can make your mouth as healthy as possible. When your teeth and gums are healthy, you feel healthier as well.
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