What Happens During a Cleaning Appointment

Oftentimes, the public is left wondering what really happens behind the scenes during a cleaning appointment. Let’s break the mystery down!

If you have been a patient in a dental office before, you likely have called to request a cleaning appointment, called it a “routine” check-up, or said you want to become a new patient.

Thanks to a strong lineage of preventative care-focused legacy, most people living in the North American subcontinent are aware that it is healthy and essential to at least visit the dentist twice a year.

Let’s Break Down Why Regular Cleaning Appointments Are Important.

Although it is often called a “Cleaning visit,” our office and team love dispelling that misnomer. These check-ups can be equated to physicals, and hence we call them dental physicals.

The purpose is to assess the oral health of the individual and also see if there are other health implications, including early identification of cancers and preventative counseling for the prevention of all oral diseases.

The steps involved included obtaining a detailed health history, taking age-appropriate and relevant X-rays (which could be a full mouth series, a Panoramic, or check-up X-rays but may warrant further investigation including 3-dimensional CBCT if there is a suspected pathology), assessing oral soft tissues including the tongue, cheeks, gums, throat area, salivary glands, tonsils, etc., and assessing hard tissue like teeth and bones. Due to advancements in technology, the radiation exposure from dental radiographs is much less than our day-to-day exposure from environmental radiation, including microwaves and flying.

Many offices love to take intraoral photographs both as an informative tool and to document the existing status. In our office, we love using the ITERO to capture patients’ teeth and gums as well as use its advanced features for early identification of potential pathologies and assessing a patient’s habitual jaw position, also known as bite. You also receive your customized oral health report at the end, so you can take charge of your next steps.

These visits are a great opportunity for people to get a true insight into their unique oral health patterns and also how to improve them with lifestyle changes and address any issues through prompt treatment. We also love learning more about our patients, their journeys, their work, their families, and their lives. It makes us truly happy to connect with you all through the process of this exchange!

Special Focus Areas

Our office also focuses on the early identification of sleep breathing disorders and interventional therapy for TMJ disorders, since that is my specialty focus. It is a region that is often overlooked by many general dentists, and many patients have been simply asked to wear a night guard, which could worsen the issue or be hard for patients to tolerate if they have an underlying airway or breathing disorder called sleep apnea.

When there is no gum disease, the patient often gets preventative maintenance called oral prophylaxis. However, the presence of gum disease, called gingivitis or periodontitis (advanced stage gum disease), will require proper treatment to address those, followed by routine maintenance to prevent recurrence.

We often see patients come to us with a relapse of disease simply because they were told they need a “deep cleaning.” I like to empower my patients by dispelling that misnomer, too. We are treating gum disease that could potentially cause heart disease down the road. Why let this repeatedly relapse? It is easy to keep it under control through proper home care and proper maintenance visits! This is my passion project, to dispel the misnomer of a “deep cleaning.” We are not cleaning the carpet now, are we? Behind the process is a fellow human being whose heart health we are indirectly caring for!

Preventative and topical (no systemic toxicity, rather it does not go inside your body, just stays on the teeth) fluoride therapy (the most effective for adults) is always a part of our regimen during appropriate maintenance visits.

Our Goal

Last but not least, our goal is to do all of this in a gentle, thorough, and soothing environment where your oral health is the center of our focus. Helping empower you is why we do it every day!