How to Resolve Periodontitis? The Essential Ways to Cure this Gum Disease
Simply put, periodontitis is a severe gum infection. It gets caused because of bacteria that accumulate on your gums and teeth. As this gum disease progresses, it can damage your teeth and bones. But if you can treat periodontitis at an early stage through proper treatment and oral hygiene, you can stop the damage.
The symptoms
The symptoms usually depend on the disease level but typically comprise of the following:
- Bad breath
- The gums that bleed on brushing or flossing
- Receding gums
- Changes in the teeth placement or having loose teeth
- Tooth loss
- Swollen, tender, or red gums
- A bad taste in the mouth
- The development of tartar or plaque in the teeth
- An inflammatory response all through the body
- Pain while chewing
The symptoms of periodontitis at an early stage are always not noticeable. However, if you feel that something is wrong, you can always check with a dentist. To know more, you can connect with specialists at Cutting Edge Periodontist.
How does periodontitis get treated?
The treatment aims to eliminate the bacterial deposit and plaque present in the gums and teeth. The probable treatment processes are:
- The correct oral hygiene practices
If you visit a dental clinic, the team there will provide you all the details about bringing down the amount of bacterial in your mouth. And here it is absolutely important to keep your gums and teeth completely clean. The dentist will provide you with ample details on tooth brushing techniques and corrects ways to floss. Based on your condition, they might also suggest you other oral hygiene products, such as mouthwash or water pick.
- Professional cleanings
The dentist will take out all the tartar and plaque build-up from the teeth and its roots at professional cleaning. After that, they will polish the teeth and use fluoride to treat it. And any periodontal pockets that got formed can need deep cleaning so that the healing follows. A deep-cleaning process called root planing and scaling helps to take off the tartar and eliminate any rough spots on the root of the tooth where the bacteria can stay.
- Use of antibiotics
A dentist will suggest you antibiotics to resolve gum infections that didn’t respond well to cleanings. The dentist can prescribe an antibiotic in form of an oral tablet, capsule, gel or mouthwash.
The follow-up appointments
It’s expected that your dentist will want a follow-up session after some weeks. After that, they would want to see you in a couple of months’ time to check the progress. In case the periodontal pockets are there, they can suggest surgery as a treatment.
Last but not least, surgery is the final treatment when other treatment modes fail. The dentists recommend a surgical process known as the flap surgery to clean the deposits present underneath the gums. They use anesthesia, lift your gums and clean the teeth roots. After that your gums gets stitched back to the place. If there is any bone loss, the dentist opts in for a bone grafting along with flap surgery to regenerate the lost bone. It would help if you counted on your dentist to decide how to treat you.
