Regular dental exams are your first line of defense when it comes to preserving the health of your teeth. This type of preventive care serves you well, and instead of viewing it as a road to our dental chair, think of it as an exit from unnecessary visits brought on by untreated, and highly preventable, oral problems.
Here at Meadowbrook Dental Care, we enjoy seeing our patients, but we prefer to see them in good health. To achieve, and maintain, great oral health, we offer comprehensive dental exams that are designed to keep our Mineola, New York patients smiling for years to come.
To get you started, here’s a look at what you should expect during your dental exam.
Keep it clean
While you may be diligent about the daily care of your teeth, regular professional cleanings with our dental hygienists tackle the areas you’re unable to get to on your own. Using specialized equipment, we provide a deep clean that removes plaque buildup in hard-to-reach places to prevent gum disease and tooth decay.
Our hygienists are trained to recognize the early signs of both of these very common problems, and they get up underneath your gums and between your teeth to clean out areas where bacteria can gather. Not only do these cleanings provide you with a clean slate, we can also brighten and polish your teeth by removing stains.
Smile for the X-ray camera
While your teeth may look healthy from the outside, decay has a way of making its way up inside your teeth. The best way to get a clear picture of what’s going on inside these structures is to have us take regular X-rays that track your teeth year over year.
To do this, we use state-of-the-art digital X-ray technology, which provides us with instant images while keeping you shielded from any unnecessary radiation. These images help us spot areas where decay may have taken hold, allowing us to quickly intervene to prevent it from spreading further and compromising your entire tooth.
Using the same technology, we’re also able to check on previous dental work to make sure it’s holding up.
An important screening
As part of our comprehensive dental exam, we provide cancer screenings using VELscopeⓇ. The soft tissue in your mouth has distinctive patterns, and by using a blue-spectrum light, we can check for disruptions in these patterns that indicate oral abnormalities. These disruptions aren’t visible to the naked eye, which is what makes VELscope such a valuable preventive tool.
Treat it and seal it
When it comes to younger teeth, we offer special fluoride treatments and sealants that help ward off decay in these especially vulnerable structures. While baby teeth eventually fall out, it’s important not to lose them early as they perform a crucial role in helping your child’s secondary teeth come in properly. By strengthening them with fluoride and sealants, we can preserve them until your child’s adult teeth are ready to make an appearance.
Tune-ups
If you have any oral devices, such as bridges or dentures, we make sure everything is working properly, making any necessary adjustments during your dental exam. As well, we check on any other work we may have performed to ensure that it’s holding up, such as fillings, crowns, and dental implants.
Check your bite
Another part of your dental exam is to check your bite to make sure you don’t have a malocclusion that needs to be corrected. An overbite, underbite, or crossbite can affect how you chew and speak, so it’s important that your teeth line up for optimal function.
This is especially important for kids between 9 and 11 years of age as their permanent teeth begin to come in.
The bottom line is that your annual dental exam allows us the opportunity to safeguard the health of your teeth, gums, and soft tissue. To set up your comprehensive dental exam, please give us a call or use the online scheduling tool on this website to make an appointment.