Living with gum disease can mean many different things. At first, you’ll only experience mild gingivitis, which sometimes causes inflammation, swelling, and bleeding, but can still be reversed with good hygiene practices. Eventually, however, you’ll have to contend with periodontitis, a serious infection that could cause you to lose your teeth. If you want to save your smile from current and future problems, call us to schedule an appointment; many of our dentists have over 30 years of experience and can help stop your infection and save your teeth with periodontal therapy in Little Rock, AR.
The goal of gum disease treatment is threefold; not only is it meant to stop the infection itself, but it also helps safeguard the teeth against further infections and gives the mouth a chance to heal. First, we perform a process called scaling to get rid of all the plaque and tartar that has built up in your mouth; this includes the area below the gums that we wouldn’t be able to reach with a normal cleaning. After that, the roots are smoothed, or “planed,” so that the nearby soft tissues can firmly reattach themselves.
Just because your teeth and gums have been cleaned doesn’t mean all the potentially harmful bacteria in your mouth is gone. To get an infection completely under control, we might prescribe antibiotic therapy. The medication is normally applied to the pockets that form between your teeth and gums due to gum disease; these spaces can be difficult to clean manually, so bacteria can very easily become trapped in them, leading to an entirely new infection.