Sadly enough, it’s pretty easy to skip dental visits for long periods. Going without them is as simple as ignoring a few phone calls, emails, or texts. That being said, you may wonder: What should you expect if you haven’t seen your dentist for years? Your Baltimore dental practice has the answer, so you don’t need to attend your next visit blind. Keep reading to learn four things that’ll happen at your long-overdue dental checkup.
A Medical History Review
If you haven’t seen a dentist in years, you can’t immediately get into the treatment-related stuff. You’ll first need to review, outline, and update your medical history.
The fact remains that your body changes over time. As months and years pass, you’ll experience new illnesses, surgeries, medications, and so on. Your dentist must know about these changes to care for your smile, or else they might misdiagnose you or suggest a bad procedure. It goes without saying that the latter outcomes wouldn’t help you; they’d harm your oral health.
A Thorough Oral Exam
You’ll receive a thorough oral exam once the medical history review is over. For this step, the dentist checks your smile’s health and notes how it’s changed since your last visit.
Note that the exam may feel a tad intense. Mouths can change a lot in a few years, so the dentist will need to look closely at your teeth, cheeks, lips, gums, and more. Doing so lets them confirm whether you have oral health issues like cavities or gum disease, as well as bite or jaw problems. As part of that process, your dental team may even take new dental X-rays to find hidden conditions.
An Extensive Teeth Cleaning
After years without getting one, don’t expect your dental checkup to go quickly. It’ll involve a lengthy teeth cleaning to make up for lost time.
Large amounts of plaque gather in your mouth when you don’t visit a dentist often enough. (A toothbrush and floss can’t manage your smile’s hard-to-reach spots.) To compensate, a hygienist will spend much of your checkup removing this bacterial film. Such work will take longer than it would if you attended visits every six months, and it may make your gums bleed.
A Treatment Plan Discussion
Following your teeth cleaning, a treatment plan discussion will wrap up your visit. This brief talk will ensure your oral health remains stable in the future.
The discussion will likely suggest various helpful procedures. For instance, your dentist may tell you to get fillings or crowns for cavities you’ve developed. They may also advise that you get more frequent maintenance appointments, which would keep your already-weak grin from getting worse. Whatever the recommendations, trust that your dentist is only trying to help your grin thrive.
When you grasp the points above, you’ll know what to expect if you haven’t seen your dentist for years. You should thus remember them ahead of your next appointment.
About the Practice
Baltimore Dental Arts is based in Baltimore, MD. Led by four amazing dentists, our practice is always aiming to meet any and every smile’s needs. We thus offer truly comprehensive dentistry, with treatments ranging from the preventive and cosmetic to the restorative and urgent. Whether you see us for a dental checkup or dental implants, rest assured that we can help! For more details or to book a visit, please contact us on our website or by phone at (410)-372-0202.