Periodontal Disease(a.k.a. Gum & Bone Disease)

Periodontal Disease, also known as gum disease, is an infection in the gums and bones supporting your teeth. These infections can cause inflammation, tooth loss, and bone damage. Other factors affecting the health of your gums and bone are: smoking and other tobacco use, grinding and clenching your teeth, stress, “bad genes”, pregnancy, poor nutrition or diet, medications, and DIABETES. Unfortunately, the earlier stages of periodontal disease may not cause symptoms, that you would recognize, and you may not seek needed treatment. By the time you notice bleeding, swelling, mouth odor, and loose teeth, the disease has progressed to an advanced stage.

We now know that the same organisms that cause the periodontal disease can enter the blood stream via the blood vessels around your teeth and cause systemic problems. Your body’s immune system inflammatory reaction to the periodontal infection can itself cause major health problems.

People with periodontal disease are at much greater risk to have arteriosclerosis, heart disease, stroke, preterm childbirth, low birth weight babies, kidney disease, lung disease, some cancers, osteoporosis, ulcers, and arthritis according to the latest research. We are finding that many of the conditions that are called “Auto-immune” diseases actually start as periodontal infections in your mouth.

With respect to pregnancy, if an oral infection is diagnosed at any time during the pregnancy, it should be treated as soon as possible. Periodontal infections are the most common of dental problems and many times not recognized by the mothers-to-be.

Gum disease begins with a sticky film of bacteria called plaque. Your gums can bleed when brushing and flossing, and become red and puffy or swollen at the edges. As the disease progresses to advanced stages, abscesses can develop, teeth get loose, and can fall out or need to be extracted by a dentist. It is also the major cause of BAD BREATH and bad taste in your mouth.

Your Treatment

Dr. Grussenmeyer believes in non-surgical periodontal therapy, performed without having to be numbed, thanks to our Piezo Ultrasonic System.....there are no sharp edges to cause pain or scrape away tooth structure as the common methods and systems do.

When some surgery is necessary, going to a periodontist for open flap surgery is becoming a thing of the past. With the advent of lasers made specifically for gum disease treatment, we can now non-invasively treat the diseased pocket areas, saving root surfaces, limiting or eliminating the tooth sensitivity of the old techniques, speed up the healing process, and even cause new bone to regenerate in the treated areas.

Anyone, who has exhibited gum disease should receive continuing care therapy every 3 months after your initial treatments. The reason for this is that it takes about 3 months for infection to restart and progress down through the gum pockets to re-infect the bone. You want to catch it before it gets that far. Ideally, everyone should be seen at 3 month intervals to assess and treat as needed because no matter how good you are, due to the shapes of individual teeth, it is virtually impossible for anyone to do a 100% thorough job. Our dental hygienist can access these areas to clean them and treat with anti-microbials as needed.

In between evaluations and treatment it is all up to you. The name of the game is: HOME CARE. We will help. Our people are teacher/nurturers and we don’t give up.

FINDING and CONTROLLING, or ELIMINATING PERIODONTAL DISEASE is OUR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY in this office!!!