It happens all too often that the dentist comes in and tells you what you ‘need’ and walks out leaving you with questions and frustrated. At Aesthetic Dentistry of Georgetown, that won’t happen! Let’s walk through your New Patient Experience so you know what to expect!
Your Risk Assessment Screening
Clues to your health are often found in the medical history, which is the foundation of your risk assessment screening. Some great keys to look for are the number and kinds of medications and the impact they have on the health of the mouth. There are some significant risk factors such as smoking that aren’t a surprise at all. Smoking is bad for you. You are 50% more likely to lose a tooth if you smoke. Well, and get lung cancer and die younger…
There are also less obvious issues such as diabetes. People who are dealing with diabetes are significantly more likely to also have periodontal disease. People with periodontal disease are up to 700% more likely to have pregnancy issues or heart disease or respiratory issues and there are even links to cancers, Alzheimer’s, and dementia. For a lot of people, the dental visits are a perfect opportunity for a bird’s eye view of overall health.
The other issue that we screen for is the impact of medications on the mouth. We know it is much easier to keep the mouth and gums healthy than to get them healthy again. One significant risk factor in keeping your teeth and gums healthy is the quantity and quality of your saliva. It functions to lubricate and buffer your mouth and protect your teeth and gums, and the saliva is essential to optimal health. Unfortunately, of the top 200 most prescribed medications in the United States, all 200 of them can cause dry mouth!
Your Head & Neck Cancer Screening
One person every hour dies from head and neck cancer in the US alone because it wasn’t caught early enough. We use both manual palpation exams and visual screenings to search for lumps and bumps at their earliest stages, because there is never a better time to treat them. We also utilize advanced screenings when there is a concern and have a referral network built if there is something that is a concern. Unfortunately, oral cancers aren’t necessarily related to smoking or alcohol use, and can attack anyone at any time. In fact, 30% of the time, there is no history of tobacco or alcohol use! Early treatment is essential, so routine screenings are your best protection.
Your Bite Screening
Usually, this doesn’t happen! For a whole host of reasons, our bodies don’t always reach their full potential. Sometimes it is diet or some environmental issue like allergies, and sometimes it is trauma or even well intended changes like braces. Then, 15 years later, the teeth don’t line up the way they should. Then, the body still has to bring them into contact 3000 times a day or more, and this puts a ton of strain on the muscles. Now the muscles have to work harder than they should all day long and they build up lactic acid and the result is pain. In fact, 85% or more of the pain in our bodies is from muscles!
If this pain were in your leg, you could grab it and call it a charlie horse. In your face, it is often called a migraine or a headache. It can also be in your shoulders and neck and sometimes even create pressure on a nerve that causes your fingers to be numb when you wake up in the morning.
There are a lot of different signs of a poor bite, and we screen your bite to make sure it is stable and comfortable, because we know what happens with a bad bite. The symptoms can be anything from mild headaches to migraines that take days to settle down. In our experience, not every headache is directly from the bite, but most are directly related to how your teeth and muscles fit and function. If you’re curious about your bite, please feel free to ask more about it during your next bite screening at your hygiene visit!
Your Airway Screening
Your body is an amazingly intricate and complex system with a lot of early warning systems built into it, if only we knew what to look for! Fortunately, the airway screening is designed to
There are a lot of red flags or early warnings that can be seen in the mouth, and a lot of damage to your body and teeth if airway issues are left untreated. One of the most common is the grinding or bruxism that often happens with airway issues. If you are “a grinder” there’s a decent chance the problem isn’t simply that you grind your teeth.
Another red flag is a scalloped border of the tongue. If you can open your mouth and see dents on the side of your tongue from your teeth, you have what is called a scalloped border of your tongue. You also have a 70% chance of having some level of sleep apnea or airway issue. Even more of a red flag is snoring. While not everyone who snores has sleep apnea or airway issues, 90% of the people who snore loudly do. If you have ever been woken up by snoring or can hear it from another room, it’s loud snoring! The problem with sleep apnea is it only gets worse and more dangerous over time, and for some people is fatal!
Your Restorative Screening
From the beginning, we have lead the field with low radiation digital x-rays that allow us to both protect you more and do a better job of catching issues in their earliest stages! Like so many things in life, the sooner you find the concern and resolve it, the easier and cheaper it is to correct. Using bonded plastic or resin fillings, we can be way more conservative and seal the tooth much better than traditional metal-mercury fillings. The huge added advantage is that they don’t create fractures in the tooth and protect the long-term health of your teeth better than traditional metal fillings. Of course, no one is upset that they are tooth colored and blend into your beautiful smile! It’s great to not have gray and black fillings, but it is so amazing that today, when they are done correctly, tooth colored fillings are a better and healthier solution in every way!
Sometimes the tooth is a little more involved than what a plastic filling can address, but we can upgrade those to bonded porcelain fillings. We know from research that when bonded in place, porcelain restorations return the tooth to its original pre-decay strength! It isn’t often you can almost wipe the slate clean and start fresh in health care! The restorative screening is designed to give you the options to find and address any issues before they become more involved or costly to correct.
Your Periodontal/Gum Tissue Screening
One of the keys to living your best life is healthy gums. When they aren’t healthy, the bacteria that infects your gums invades your lungs and gut and brain and has been found to mess with nearly every major organ system. One of the first is blood sugar control, leading to diabetes. The connection between gum tissue disease and diabetes is a two-way street with each making the other one worse! There are also more and more studies showing the impact of gum tissue infection in the brains of people suffering with dementia and Alzheimer’s! It turns out the protective blood-brain barrier is essentially a force field that keeps bad things out of our brain. Gum tissue infection leads to a breakdown of this barrier and allows the bacteria to seep into your brain! Additionally, we find these bacteria in all the other organs and involved with issues from respiratory infections to cancer!
Of course, keeping your teeth for life is a fantastic way to stay healthier and decrease the need for medications later in your life. Also, keeping your gums healthy is the way to keep your teeth for life! One of the best things you can do for your health is to keep your gum tissues healthy, and our periodontal program is designed around non-surgical management to keep you from getting infected. Our hygienists have been leading the profession and taught our approach to protecting health to other hygienists and dental offices. You owe it to yourself to have the best care you can find to keep you healthy, and our hygiene team is here to help!
What Do You Do From Here?
As with any of the options discussed with us, it is totally your choice how you want to deal with the information. Our job is to let you know what we see and offer you options for the best dental care available. Your job would be to decide how to use that information. While we will always treat your mouth as we would our own, and give you the same options we would want, we also want to make sure you can decide what makes most sense for you.
If you haven’t been to the dentist for a while and know it’s time, give us a call and we will help you set up your New Patient Experience and get you back to health and wellness!
