Dental Health

 

In this day and age, we all have come to understand why we go to the dentist and why it is important to get our teeth cleaned. Not only does it improve our every day smiles and our sometimes over-bearing morning breath, but it helps us maintain healthier lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, brain, and mouth. Believe it or not, our mouths have a large impact on our over-all health. Without routine dental exams, radiographs, and cleanings we would have bacteria traveling into our bloodstream and to our vital organs. Now the question is, how does NAC differ from the rest, how do we rise above other facilities in dental care?

Here, at Northern Animal Clinic we have two licensed veterinary technicians and one veterinary assistant that have been trained and certified at the Animal Dental Training Center in Baltimore, MD to perform dental cleanings on your pets. We start by performing a full examination on your pet, checking temperature, pulse, respiration, and overall health of your pet. We then drew a small amount of blood to run a pre-anesthetic blood screen on your pet to check the liver and kidney values. It is important to be aware of any abnormalities before anesthesia, so the doctor can make necessary adjustments to reduce complications.

After running the blood work our licensed veterinary technicians will work with your veterinarian to determine the appropriate injectable sedation for your pet. She will then place an intravenous catheter for fluid therapy for the procedure and so we have quick access for administering additional intravenous medications. (Not all clinics offer fluid therapy for every procedure. We feel that every anesthetized patient needs to have fluid therapy. It helps maintain hydration, blood pressure, and overall well being of a patient in surgery.) The patient is then intubated and placed on an appropriate amount of oxygen and gas anesthetic called Isoflurane.

Once the patient is under anesthesia we do a full examination of the oral cavity. This is very important since we can be more thorough while the pet is asleep; we check the lymph nodes, how the mouth is opening and closing, oral mucosa, the tongue, hard and soft palate, jaw lines, etc. After noting any abnormalities, we start to probe around every tooth with an instrument called periodontal probe. With this instrument we probe each tooth at four different angles; checking for any deep pockets and attachment loss. During the probing we check for any mobile teeth (loose); the way we do this is by placing two instruments on either side of each tooth and attempting to move the tooth. We determine any mobility and grade it on a scale from 0-3, zero being no mobility and three being severe mobility, usually greater than one millimeter. 

After this hands-on phase, we move into the digital radiograph portion. Our state-of-the-art oral imaging system is an extremely helpful part of our dental procedure. We perform full mouth radiographs on every patient in order to diagnose dental problems that may hide under the gum line, in the bones of the jaw, and between the teeth. We are looking for areas that may indicate an abscess, bone loss, fractures, and broken roots. Veterinary dental experts state that dental radiographs are necessary to practice safe and effective dental care for each and every patient no matter what breed, species, or age. In cases where we are extracting a tooth we will perform before and after radiographs to make sure we have extracted the whole crown and root of the specific tooth.

The cleaning portion of the dental prophylaxis comes next. Depending on how advanced the dental tartar is we start by using a hand scaler. We remove the visible calculus that surrounds the tooth and that lies beneath the gum line. This part is very important because it is not only what you can see but what you can not see that affects those vital organs. Tartar and plaque below the gum line will cause periodontal disease (which leads to tooth loss & infection) Next we use the ultra-sonic cleaner. With quick, rapid motions we clean back and forth on each tooth breaking down any remaining tartar. The ultra-sonic scaler also helps remove staining from plaque sitting too long on the teeth.

After each tooth, front and back has been scaled by hand and ultra-sonically, it is time to polish. We polish every surface of every tooth with a non-drying, water soluble, non-staining, glossy polishing paste that is applied with our polishing tool. Why is polishing important? Microscopic scratches are made on the surfaces of each tooth while cleaning; without polishing these scratches attract plaque and bacteria. Polishing the teeth makes the surface smooth again, and helps to slow the build up of future tartar and plaque.

No dental prophy is complete without ORA-VET! Ora-Vet is a plaque prevention gel that electro-statically binds to the teeth to slow the accumulation of plaque and bacteria. It helps protect the teeth 24/7 and takes only 60 seconds to apply once weekly. It is odorless, tasteless and invisible once it is applied, and is compatible with tooth brushing. We apply the first application of Ora-Vet to your pets’ teeth right after the cleaning, and then your job at home is to apply it once weekly and keep up on home care, such as brushing. Brushing is still important, but the Ora-Vet reduces the plaque that accumulates in between brushings.

Home care and up-keep starts at home. Continuing the Ora-Vet once weekly and brushing your pets teeth daily to every other day will keep your pet in tip top shape. Appropriate chew toys and hard, textured food will also help remove plaque. A consistent home-care program will greatly improve your pet’s dental health. This means fewer professional cleanings, less tooth loss, and a happier, healthier pet.

 

 

“Providing the Quality Care Your Pet Deserves”