How Important Are Dental Hygienist Appointments?

If you don’t already see our Edinburgh based hygienist, here are a few good reasons why you should.

Most patients are happy to declare that they see the dentist regularly for check ups to make sure that their oral health is on track, and to receive any restorative care that might be needed. This is a very good start, however, if you ask the same people if they also see the hygienist;  if they are in line with national statistics, only about one in five of them will do so.

There might be a variety of reasons why this is the case, but one common response is that they don’t even know what they do. For those people, let us take a look at the benefits of seeing the dental hygienist.

What does a hygienist do?

Most people understand what a dentist predominantly does; i.e. look after your teeth and restore them where needed. It may surprise some people to know that seeing the hygienist is also essential for healthy teeth, despite the fact that their prime role is to enable you to have healthy gums. This makes more sense as we look at the stages of gum disease.

The earlier stage is known as gingivitis. Typical symptoms of this include bleeding gums, sore and inflamed gums and bad breath. All very unpleasant, we are sure that you will agree. Despite this though, this earlier stage of gum disease is usually treatable with a procedure known as a ‘scale and polish’, which we will discuss shortly.

If this is not detected soon enough, as might be the case if you don’t see a hygienist, this can advance to the more serious periodontitis stage. While gingivitis attacks and affects the gums alone, periodontitis does this too but also attacks the roots of the tooth and the surrounding bone in which the roots sit. When this happens, the bone starts to degrade and bone loss can occur. As this happens, its hold on the tooth roots start to weaken and teeth can become wobbly and even fall out altogether.

Treatment for this latter stage is much more complex than for gingivitis and may not even be successful. As you can see then, it is best to take preventative action to avoid gum disease by seeking professional help.

What happens at your appointment?

There are essentially two parts to your appointment with our Edinburgh hygienist. The first part will take details of your general oral health, lifestyle and dietary habits. They will then discuss ways in which you can improve this to help protect your gum health. An obvious example would be to discuss how you might stop smoking if you currently do. This is one of the most harmful things that you can do for your oral health and is a major factor in gum disease and also potentially fatal oral cancers.

Other things that might be discussed are how you brush your teeth, helping you to do so more effectively, and also encouraging you to use dental floss. This is very important in removing food and bacteria that often gets trapped in places that a toothbrush can’t reach. They will happily demonstrate how to do this correctly too if you wish.

The other part of the appointment is the provision of the non invasive ‘scale and polish’ procedure which we mentioned earlier. This will remove a hardened ‘crust’ that forms on the teeth and around the gum line. This is made up of dead bacteria and minerals from saliva and its rough surface attracts even more bacteria.

In order to remove this, a three stage procedure will take place. There is normally no need for a local anaesthetic and you shouldn’t feel any significant discomfort during it.

1. The majority of the crust, which is known as tartar or calculus, is first removed using a special implement known as a scaler. This is a manual tool that ‘scrapes’ away the initial volume of tartar from the teeth and gum line.
   
2. The second part of the procedure uses a sonic tool which uses sound frequencies to shatter the majority of what remains of the tartar. This is washed away using water suction.
   
3. Finally, a special brush is used to remove any further tartar and which also helps to remove surface staining from your teeth. Once you have had this done, your mouth will feel much fresher and your teeth smoother. You are also likely to notice an improvement in the colour of your teeth. This will not correct any internal discolouration though and if this is an issue, you should talk to us about our popular teeth whitening procedure to help correct this.

This procedure is part of the preventative care that we offer at our Edinburgh New Town dental clinic. We believe that while sophisticated treatments are now available to help restore damaged and decayed teeth, nothing can beat having natural healthy teeth for as long as possible.

If you would like to make an appointment with our hygienist, you can contact us today by calling the 103 Dental and Implant Practice on 0131 6083219. We look forward to your call.