Here is What a General Dentist Does During Routine Exams
As a general dentist, we are the strongest advocates of people coming in at least twice per year to get a cleaning and checkup. Luckily, many people have begun to understand the importance of oral health and are scheduling these kinds of appointments regularly. When you make it a habit to come in every six months, we have the opportunity to find any potential problems with your oral health and correct them immediately. Most people are now familiar with the routine of an annual, or bi-annual, general dentist visit. The visit begins with a complete cleaning of your teeth. We will remove any excess plaque; that may cause erosion, from off of the teeth and also from around the gum line. Plaque around the gum line has been known to be a contributing factor to gum diseases. The dentist will perform a complete inspection of your teeth, checking for cavities and also for soft spots that could wear out later on and turn into cavities.
For general dentist visits, you can expect the routine to be relatively the same every time. The only variation that occur is when we find a cavity that needs filling or we find the need to perform additional diagnostics. This routine often causes people to wonder why it is so important to come in once every six months instead of once every few years. The simple answer is time is not a friend when it comes to time spent between dental visits. Your entire digestive process begins in the mouth, which means your overall health is directly affected by what you swallow. Allowing too much time between general dentist visits can cause a buildup of plaque, infections, and oral bacteria to take hold in your mouth and potentially have an adverse effect on your entire body. In addition, there are a few other things that you should know about which make these visits critically important.
Most people look at us funny when we tell them, which we rarely do, that we actively are smelling your breath during the examination. While we appreciate the patients who go the extra mile to brush their teeth, use mouthwash, or chew gum before coming in, we also prefer if you would dispense with the niceties. This is because a lot can be learned from the smell of your mouth and can help us know if we need to look a little further and dig a little deeper to catch a potential problem like an infection.
One aspect of the examination that goes unnoticed is the fact that we also perform a full screening for oral cancer when you come in. Oral cancer is one of those deadly diseases that can hide in plain sight, making it important for a seasoned trained professional to keep an eye out for its development. General practitioners and doctors also do these screenings, but there is no one as familiar with oral challenges as your dentist, so doing the screening once every six months during your general dentist visits has become standard.
