Many people usually postpone dental appointments. Dentists and the American Dental Association highly recommend visiting a dentist regularly. While dental fear may constitute a reason for delaying or canceling a dental appointment, there’s always a good reason to see your dentist every six months or as needed.
Continue reading below to learn about the importance of regular dentist visits.
Maintain Good Oral Health
A regular dental visit includes a dental examination or checkup, and oral prophylaxis or cleaning. Your dentist in Westminster will inspect your teeth to detect cavities, tartar, and plaque. Tartar is hardened plaque, causing oral disease, which can’t be removed with regular brushing and flossing.
Here are the things you can expect on a dentist visit to help maintain good oral health:
- The dentist will use specialized tools for removing tartar and the procedure is called scaling.
- The dentist will measure the depth of your gums to ensure the space between your teeth and gums are shallow. Deeper spaces indicate gum disease.
- Your teeth will be polished after scaling using a gritty paste to help remove surface stains.
- The last step is flossing, to ensure that all areas of your teeth are free from food particles and debris.
Prevent Tooth Decay and Gum Disease
A clinical dental examination is done as needed to make sure that tooth decay and gum disease are prevented. Your dentist will check your oral cavity for any loose teeth or broken teeth, and signs of gum disease.
Also, your dentist will check for any damaged filling and replace them as necessary to preserve your permanent teeth. Your dentist will inspect visual evidence of gum disease and tooth decay, as well as check your bite and evaluate the need for a dental appliance.
Monitor Your Oral Health
Aside from brushing your teeth, a regular dentist visit is one way to monitor your oral health. The best person who can do it is a trusted, reliable, and experienced dentist. Your dentist will carefully examine your oral cavity, including your throat, neck, and head to look for any signs of a problem, such as redness, swelling, or signs of cancer.
Get Timely Expert Advice
While your dentist can extract extremely weak or severely damaged teeth, you’ll be given timely advice when to replace your teeth with dentures. You may get either lower or upper dentures, or both, depending on the number of remaining teeth available.
Also, your Westminster cosmetic dentist can provide expert advice on the best time to undergo dental cosmetic procedures, such as teeth whitening and dental implants.
Here are some examples of common cosmetic dentistry procedures:
- Dental Veneers: These are custom-made shells of resin or tooth-colored porcelain covering the front teeth surface. The thin shells are cemented or bonded to the front teeth, changing the shape, size, color, or length.
- Dental Bonding: A durable tooth-colored resin is applied to the tooth. It is hardened using ultraviolet light or laser light to bond the material to your tooth. After which, the dentist will trim, shape, and polish it. Dental bonding takes about 30 to 60 minutes, which can repair chipped, cracked, misshapen, or decayed teeth. Also, it’s a great cosmetic alternative to silver fillings or amalgams.
- Dental Crown: It restores the size, shape, appearance, and strength of the tooth. It keeps a weak tooth from breaking. Also, it holds a cracked tooth together and can be used to cover severely discolored or misshapen teeth. Crowns are usually made from metal, ceramic, porcelain-fused-to-metal, or resin.
- Inlays and Onlays: These are known as indirect fillings, which are made from porcelain, composite materials, or gold. Indirect fillings can fill damaged or decayed teeth.
- Dental Implants: These are titanium replacement roots inserted into the jaw bone socket of missing teeth.
Take Advantage of Your Health Insurance Benefits
While Medicare doesn’t generally offer dental coverage, you should, however, take advantage of your Medicare Advantage (or Part C) plan or private health insurance plan, which is usually provided as an employee benefit. It covers everything that Medicare covers with dental benefits, such as routine preventive care.
Here are the covered dental services of Medicare Advantage or a private health insurance plan:
- Regular exams
- Cleanings
- X-rays
- Tooth extraction
- Root canal
- Dentures
- Dental crowns
- Dental fillings
- Treatment for gum disease
Conclusion
Visiting a dentist is crucial towards achieving overall health. You probably experienced a simple toothache that became worse, and you don’t want this situation to happen again. Maintain good oral hygiene, increase your self-confidence, get expert advice, and take advantage of your dental insurance coverage by seeking regular dentist consultation.
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