Common form of gum disease
Healthy gums
The periodontal probe
Gingivitis
What is gingivitis?
Gingivitis, which is a swelling and inflammation of the gums, is the first stage of periodontal disease.
What causes gingivitis?
The main cause of gingivitis is the accumulation of plaque, the sticky film of food and bacteria that forms constantly on your teeth.
If plaque isn't removed each day, the bacteria in plaque invade the space between the teeth and gums and begin producing toxins. These toxins irritate and inflame the gums, causing them to swell and bleed.
Gingivitis is easily reversed, but if it's not caught in time, it can lead to periodontal disease, a more serious infection of the teeth, gums, and jawbone that can lead to tooth loss.
The warning signs
Some of the warning signs of gingivitis are redness where the gums and tooth meet, swollen gums, bleeding when brushing and flossing, and bad breath.
There is usually no pain associated with gingivitis. It's the mildest form of gum disease, and many people aren't aware they have the condition.
To determine whether you have gingivitis, we'll perform a thorough examination. We'll look for any changes in the shape, color and contour of the gums, and bleeding in the gums upon probing.
The treatment
If we determine that you do have gingivitis, treatment always includes a professional cleaning, which removes plaque buildup from the teeth.
Sometimes, additional steps are required. These could include using a disclosing solution regularly to determine where the plaque is, reviewing the most effective techniques for brushing and flossing, and using an antibacterial rinse to help kill destructive bacteria. We may also need to set up more frequent office visits to monitor the health of your gums.
It's important to catch and treat gingivitis early, before it progresses and results in the bone and tooth loss of periodontal disease.
Inflamed and swollen gums
Plaque causes periodontal disease
Probe measures periodontal
pockets
Diagnosing Periodontal Disease
What is periodontal disease?
Periodontal disease is an infection of the teeth, gums, and the bone that surrounds the teeth, and it's the leading cause of adult tooth loss. Stopping this condition begins with a thorough diagnosis.
What causes periodontal disease?
The main cause of periodontal disease is the accumulation of plaque, the sticky film of food and bacteria that forms constantly on your teeth.
If plaque isn't removed each day, the bacteria in plaque invade the spaces between the teeth and gums and begin producing toxins. These toxins, combined with your body's reaction to them, destroy the bone around your teeth. And once bone has been lost, it never grows back on its own.
When too much bone is lost, there's so little support for the teeth, they get loose and have to be removed.
The warning signs
If you have periodontal disease, you may be experiencing persistent bad breath, bleeding of the gums when brushing or flossing, soft, swollen, or tender gums, gums pulling away from the teeth, or loose teeth. You may also notice inflammation of the gums between the teeth. This is where periodontal disease usually starts.
It is also possible to have no noticeable symptoms. In fact, most people who have periodontal disease aren't even aware of it.
Diagnosis and treatment
To find periodontal disease, we perform a thorough examination with a periodontal probe and x-rays. Periodontal probing measures the depth of the space between your teeth and gums. When you have periodontal disease, these spaces are called pockets. We measure the pocket from the bottom of the pocket, where it's attached to the tooth, to the top of the gums. A probe reading of more than 3 millimeters is a sign of periodontal disease. In general, the deeper the pockets, the greater the spread of periodontal disease.
Gums sometimes bleed during probing. This is also a sign of infection. X-rays tell us a lot about periodontal disease. As periodontal disease progresses, xrays will show that jawbone levels have become uneven, and that bone has receded away from the necks of the teeth.
Once we've found periodontal disease, we'll talk with you about treatment options and proper homecare to minimize bone loss and restore the health of your gums.
Smoking stains teeth
Consider quitting
Smoking constricts blood flow
Smoking and Periodontal Disease
By now almost everyone knows that smoking has been linked with lung disease, cancer, and heart disease. But most people aren't aware that smokers are three to six times more likely to have periodontal disease, and two times more likely to lose teeth.
Periodontal disease
Periodontal disease is an infection of the teeth, gums, and the bone that surrounds your teeth. It's caused by the bacteria that live in plaque, the sticky film of food and bacteria that forms constantly on your teeth. The bacteria infect the tooth roots and cause pockets of infection to form in the gums.
The bacteria also produce toxins, and these toxins, combined with your body's reaction to them, destroy the bone around your teeth.
Periodontal disease and smoking
Smoking helps cause periodontal disease in two ways: it reduces the production of saliva, and it damages the body's ability to fight off infection.
Saliva is necessary for oral health because it helps wash bacteria from the teeth, so less saliva means more plaque. Saliva also contains disease-fighting antibodies that help fight destructive bacteria in the mouth.
Smoking damages your immune system by causing blood vessels to constrict throughout your entire body. This constriction reduces the flow of infection-fighting white blood cells, oxygen, and nutrients to the gums, making them more susceptible to infection.
Besides contributing to the onset of periodontal disease, continuing to smoke after periodontal treatment makes it much harder for your gums to heal. So if you haven't yet thought about quitting smoking, you should consider it now. By becoming a nonsmoker you can strengthen the fight against periodontal disease and keep your teeth.
We'll closely monitor your gums
X-rays show bone loss
3 Month Recare for Periodontal Patients
If you have a history of periodontal disease, it's vital that we examine the health of your gums every three months. That's because periodontal disease cannot be cured. It can only be controlled. And if it isn't closely monitored and controlled, over time it can quickly worsen, destroying bone and soft tissue, and eventually causing you to lose your teeth.
Why is frequent recare important?
When we first find periodontal disease, we treat it with scaling and root planing to remove plaque and infection from beneath your gums.
While this treatment disrupts the growth of the bacteria, some bacteria do remain and may settle back into the pocket, where they begin reproducing again. In fact, once bacteria have become re-established in the pockets, the number of bacteria doubles every time it reproduces, reaching destructive levels in as little as 90 days.
What if I don't see any problems?
Unfortunately, you can't simply wait until you notice a problem before you come in for a periodontal maintenance appointment because periodontal disease can recur without your being aware of it. This happens because the disease is unpredictable in two ways: it's site-specific and sporadic. Site-specific means that the infection can recur in just one periodontal pocket out of the possible 192 that exist in your mouth, or it may be more widespread. Sporadic means that periodontal disease might start up again right away, or it might go into remission for awhile.
For these reasons, if we aren't checking every three months, you would have no way of knowing that the disease is recurring, and the destruction would continue unchecked. This also means that the typical twice-a-year cleaning schedule just isn't safe for those who have periodontal disease.
What hapens during a recare apointment?
It's important that you come in every three months for a periodontal maintenance appointment, which may include:
- Taking x-rays
- Measuring the depth of periodontal pockets
- Re-evaluating the effectiveness of your homecare
- Removing plaque above and below the gumline
- Re-treating with scaling and root planing, if necessary
More frequent periodontal maintenance visits help us break the stronghold of bacteria in your gums, minimize the recurrence of the infection, and slow or eliminate its destructive effects.