What is Periodontal Disease?
Do you have gum disease (also called Periodontitis or Periodontal Disease)? Over 175 million Americans suffer from Gum Disease, which is larger than the number of Americans with cancer, heart disease, or even arthritis. Some doctors estimate that 85% of people have gum disease.
How do you know if you have Periodontitis? Healthy gums are firm and pale pink and fit snugly around teeth. Signs and symptoms of periodontitis can include:
- Swollen or puffy gums
- Bright red, dusky red, or purplish gums
- Gums that feel tender when touched
- Gums that bleed easily
- Pink-tinged toothbrush after brushing
- Spitting out blood when brushing or flossing your teeth
- Bad breath
- Pus between your teeth and gums
- Loose teeth or loss of teeth
- Painful chewing
- New spaces are developing between your teeth
- Gums that pull away from your teeth (recede), making your teeth look longer than normal; or
- A change in the way your teeth fit together when you bite.
Gums can become red, swollen, and bleed easily. However, some patients have no symptoms at all.
Gum disease is a bacterial infection and is serious. In fact, the #1 cause of tooth loss is gum disease. Perhaps unsurprising, having an uncontrolled bacterial infection in your mouth has been linked to an increased risk of several other more serious diseases, like heart disease and stroke.
Treatment
The traditional treatment for gum disease is scaling and root planing at your dentist. It’s known as non-surgical periodontal therapy or a “deep cleaning.” It involves the removal of dental plaque and calculus and then smoothing, or planing, of the surfaces of the roots, removing cementum or dentine that is impregnated with calculus, toxins, or bacteria, the agents that cause inflammation.
Although scaling and root planing is an effective treatment for gum disease, it’s not the best treatment. First, although an anesthetic is used, patients can find it uncomfortable. Second, there is a more advanced technology that allows for *regeneration* of the tooth material lost to infection.
If you are searching for a laser dentist near you, our office offers a certified periodontal specialist who uses a state‑of‑the‑art laser to treat gum disease gently and effectively.
At Parkview, our Periodontal Specialist, Dr. Phillip Garrett, is trained in the LANAP Protocol. LANAP uses a state-of-the-art laser to vaporize the bacteria deep within the pockets of the gums while leaving healthy tissue intact. It also truly regenerates the attachment apparatus (new cementum, new periodontal ligament, and new alveolar bone) on a previously diseased root surface. It is fast, nearly painless, and consistently removes periodontal disease.
Here’s how it works: a tiny laser fiber (about the thickness of three hairs) is inserted between the tooth and the gum, and the infection is cleared away without cutting or stitching of the gums. The tooth roots are then thoroughly cleaned of tartar and plaque, and the laser is used again with a different setting to create a stable, firm blood clot to seal the pocket. The dentist treats one half of the patient’s mouth at each session, and most patients are able to drive themselves back to work or home following the procedure
