Why does your pet need good dental care?

Dental care is necessary to provide optimum health and quality of life. Diseases of the oral cavity, if left untreated, are often painful and can contribute to other local or systemic diseases.

How bad are your pets’ teeth?

Grade 1: There is a mild amount of plaque, and mild redness in the gums.

Grade 2: There is subgingival plaque, and there is redness and edema in the gums.

Grade 3: There is subgingival calculus, redness, edema, gums bleed easily, gum recession.

Grade 4: In grade 4, there is severe tartar, redness, edema, bleeding gums, oral pain, tooth loss.

What goes on when my pet is getting a dental?

  1. When we do a dental the first thing we do is a dental examination. This is where we take a good look at the teeth and are able to conclude how much time we will need for possible extractions.
  2. Once the pet is brought in for their appointment we do a quick exam to check their vitals to ensure safety under anesthesia. The patient has been withheld from food for the past 12 hours to prevent vomiting while under anesthesia. Therefore, they possibly dehydrated to some degree.
  3. Then we place the I.V. catheter, it allows the anesthesiologist to administer drugs to the patient easily. Which is especially critical in the face of any medical emergency that may occur.
  4. We then hook up the IV fluids that will help keep the blood pressure stabilized and will allow the patient to recover faster from anesthesia and return to an awake and fully functional status. This greatly reduces stress and adds to the pets’ well-being.
  5. We will then induce general anesthesia, that is given slowly intravenously and will be monitored continuously throughout the procedure.

Tools that are used throughout the procedure:

Ultrasonic Scaler: This hand piece removes calculus rapidly from the tooth surface and allows cleaning under the gum line. This piece is critical to every dental to ensure the right conditions for the gums to thrive.

Polisher: The purpose of the cleaning and polishing is to leave the surface of the teeth clean and smooth so that bacteria are unable to stick to them.  This way you have a better chance of keeping them clean during regular home care.

Dental X-ray Machine: This machine is just like the x-ray at your dentist. These x-rays are used with low levels of radiation to capture images of the interior of your teeth and gums. This can help us to identify underlying problems, like cavities, tooth decay and impacted teeth. These may seem complex, but they’re actually very common tool that are very important.