How Often Should I Have My Teeth Examined?
The typical approach is to schedule an appointment with your dentist every six months. Needless to say, depending on the state of health your teeth are in, the number of visits you make to your dentist will either go up or down.
One guaranteed way to keep your dental examination visits low is to take good care of your teeth in the first place. There isn’t a dentist alive who has not said that over and over again to his patients and the community at large. It is always better to prevent tooth ailments from complicating from neglect. A look at the statistics will show that tooth enamel decay is the most common medial problem faced by people across age groups, geographical boundaries and cultures.
However, back to the more pragmatic of prevention practices, just a regularly scheduled visit to your dentist should be able to spot most problems as they occur. Oral examinations and x-rays are well-capable of spotting dental problems at all stages, including the very earliest. Everything from the tooth structure, the underlying bone structure of the jaw and even the build-up of plague can be spotted through an x-ray. Quite a few dentists store these x-rays of their patients over a period of time so that they can superimpose or overlay x-ray images over a period of time and actually estimate the rate of damage that is happening.
For example, one unnoticed ailment is the build-up of plague under the gums. This accumulation happens over a period of time and since it is a calcified deposit that is more porous than the tooth enamel it clings to, it is a very safe harbor for bacteria. This marks the onset of periodontal disease, which in its later stages can make your teeth wobbly and painful, as well as eat away at the jawbone itself. In fact, the latter is noticed in 23% of the cases treated. Plague can be handled easily enough with regular cleaning of our teeth that will take stains and such deposits off your teeth.
Clearly, regular dental examinations are the best way to keep ahead of a host of dental problems. There really is no reason to allow something preventable to rob you of your smile in the years to come and timely examinations are the only insurance against that eventuality.