Cleanings

No matter how careful you are, no matter how well you help or monitor your child with brushing and flossing, home dental hygiene can’t replace your regular professional cleaning. Even when your children spend their full two minutes brushing in the morning and night, there could be lingering food particles or sugary liquids that feed bacteria. Medications like cough syrup can also feed those cavity bugs. Once that bacterial film, otherwise known as plague, gets a foothold on teeth, it can turn into tartar, the hard crust that is so difficult to get off and leads to gum disease and cavities.Cavity prevention is really important, even in baby teeth. Even though those baby teeth will eventually come out, an infection in a baby tooth can:

• Affect the teeth developing underneath
• Lead to pain and discomfort
• Cause inflammation in the entire body

We know you don’t want that! Plus, if a tooth is lost too early because of cavities or abscess, the adult tooth may not come in properly if space is not maintained for it.We recommend at least two cleanings a year to disrupt and clean off the bacterial films that can wreak such havoc in anyone’s mouth – especially little ones’. These hygiene visits also give us an opportunity to teach kids about caring for their own teeth and to check up on tooth and jaw development.