Brushing and flossing at home are crucial, but they aren’t enough to keep your smile healthy long-term. These habits will often overlook things that cause problems if they go unaddressed. With that said, dental checkups and cleanings with our dentist in San Antonio can pick up the slack. These visits catch and treat your smile’s minor issues, ensuring worse ones don’t occur. Please keep reading or book a consultation to learn more about them!
Why Are Regular Dental Checkups & Cleanings Important?
Regular dental visits are essential for your smile; you should attend them (at least) every six months. If you skip the sessions, you’ll put your grin at great risk.
Note that dental checkups and cleanings prevent big oral problems. Since they let Dr. Brice check and clean your mouth, the visits keep your grin from gathering too much plaque and tartar. Going without them would thus make cavities, gum disease, and worse conditions more likely. From there, you’d suffer dental emergencies and other health dilemmas.
Regular dental checkups also save you a lot of time and money. Each one only takes an hour and allows full coverage from dental insurance, so skipping a visit just isn’t worthwhile. Not showing up would make you pay for a costly and time-consuming treatment (root canals, tooth extractions, etc.) later.
What to Expect During a Dental Checkup
During a checkup at Brice Dental, you should expect the following:
- An Oral Exam – Our practice starts each checkup with an oral exam, which assesses your teeth, bite, and prior dental work. It also screens you for possible signs of oral cancer.
- Dental X-rays – Roughly once a year, a checkup will take dental X-rays to see if patients have issues below the surface.
- A Review of Medical History – We usually update a patient’s medical history at each checkup. Doing so lets us see if the medicines you take affect your oral health.
- Treatment Plan(s) – If a checkup spots any potential issues, we’ll draft a custom treatment plan for you. Dr. Brice will then lay things out step by step.
- A Brief Q&A – Near a checkup’s end, patients can voice their questions and concerns about their oral health.
What to Expect During a Dental Cleaning
Since brushing and flossing can’t protect your whole mouth, we clean teeth after each checkup. These cleanings feature:
- Plaque Removal – Using specialized instruments, a hygienist will remove the plaque (and tartar) between your teeth and along your gums.
- Precise Polishing – Our team polishes your teeth after the primary cleaning, removing your smile’s minor stains. That way, your whole grin will shine brighter than before.
- Some Flossing – We typically floss a patient’s teeth as part of cleaning. In doing so, we eliminate plaque we may have missed earlier.
- Fluoride Treatment – Dr. Brice will sometimes apply fluoridated gel at the end of a patient’s teeth cleaning. This gel strengthens enamel and protects it from decay and cavities.
