Periodontitis is an infectious bacterial disease, that attacks and destroys the supporting tissues around one or more teeth.
It is mainly caused by the bacterial formation around, over and under the gums (biofilms and scale).
Those tissues get gradually detached from the teeth and the space between them gets bigger and bigger, causing mobility of the tooth and exposing the roots (thus making the tooth appear longer).
Periodontitis is a silent disease because it usually has no painful symptoms. If the patient doesn’t follow a regular check up program, it can be quite late when the disease is diagnosed (moving teeth or intensely exposed roots). What is more, periodontitis – once treated properly and stabilised – requires a regular check-up for life, to prevent any possible relapses.
There are three stages of parodontitis: mild, moderate and severe.
At the CHD we treat periodontitis based on the following outlines :
- We begin with a general descaling to control the inflammation.
- We present a detailed individualised program of dental hygiene for you to adopt home, so that we prevent new plaque accumulating around your gums.
- We perform a complete charting of your mouth, so that we have a detailed description of your current periodontal condition and your gum pockets. We will later base our individualised follow up program on that.
- We perform a complete curettage under local anesthesia so that we eliminate the tartre present around the gums and all diseased tissues infected by bacteria that are hiding in the gum pockets. The number of sessions necessary depends on each individual case.
At the re-evaluation phase, there are different possibilities concerning the state of periodontitis :
- If there is a complete stabilisation, the patient enters the maintenance phase (a scale and polish session is advised to be carried out more often than with a regular patient).
- When the infectious, degenerative phase of the disease is stabilised, but there is need to reconstruct the bone and soft tissues lost by the bacteria, that is the point where the specialist takes action.
- If there are still some gum pockets where bacteria action is present, again the periodontologist takes action.
The curettage can only bring us to the desired result if the patient respects meticulously the personalized hygiene instructions provided (brushing technique, use of interdental brushes etc.). Otherwise, the treatment is doomed to fail. In case of non-abidance to those instructions our hygienist will not begin the treatment, saving you this way valuable time and money.