We welcome questions about oral care for your pet and if you cannot find an answer on our website, please feel free to contact us. We have covered some of the common frequently asked questions below.
Explore commonly asked questions:
Pets with broken or damaged teeth (eg. discolored teeth or worn teeth) need an examination under anesthesia which will include probing and dental x-rays. Fractures without the pulp exposed may benefit from a sealant, while the ones with pulp exposure need either root canal therapy or extraction.
Root canal therapy is commonly performed for fractured and discolored teeth. This treatment is less invasive than extraction and allows your pets to retain functionally important teeth (eg. chewing and grasping or retrieving teeth). Moreover, gum surgery or bone grafting can also be performed when bone loss threatens the health of the functionally important teeth.
Bad breath is an indication of an infection of the gums or bone. We will perform periodontal probing and dental x-rays to determine the best treatment plan:
For pets with inflamed gums and no bone loss, we recommend professional cleaning and polishing followed by a preventative home oral hygiene plan.
If there are periodontal pockets around the teeth, we can treat your pet with root planing or tissue regenerative therapy.
For more severe disease, extractions are performed with optimal pain control and tissue closure to encourage rapid healing and return to eating.
Age is not a disease and therefore not a risk factor for [safe anesthesia]. We ensure that each pet has an individualized anesthetic protocol based on his/her health status and specific procedure that is being performed. Our goal is for most patients to be fully recovered from anesthesia in 1-2 hours and ready to go home alert and comfortable. Learn more about our anesthetic protocol.
Anesthesia can be safely performed in pets with heart and kidney condition/disease. We perform additional pre-anesthetic testing with specific medications, patient supportive therapy and monitoring to ensure that. Learn more about our [anesthesia and pain management].
Professional teeth cleaning, performed under general [anesthesia], allows us to:
Record your pet’s oral status with pre- and post-cleaning photographs
Clean above and below your pet’s gums
Probe around every tooth (under the gums like your dentist)
Without performing anesthesia on your pet, teeth, and tissues under the gums cannot be fully evaluated and x-rays cannot be taken. This may result in underdiagnosis.
We encourage pet-owners to visit the American Veterinary Dental College to learn the facts and answers to the common questions about anesthesia-free dental cleaning.
It is not until our patients’ teeth are cleaned, dental x-rays are evaluated and probing is recorded that we know the extent of dental disease that exists and ultimately the treatment(s) that are needed. At this time an accurate treatment plan is formulated, photos are taken and we will efficiently perform the needed dental therapy/procedure(s) to restore his/her oral health.
In most instances we have anticipated additional findings and will be able to complete the therapy within the written estimate. If not, we will contact pet owners to inform them, but most importantly we will photograph the entire procedure and strive to treat all disease under one anesthesia for purposes of anesthetic safety and cost savings over two separate procedures.
Specialty training in dentistry requires the completion of a 3-6 years of training in an area of specialization beyond a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine Degree (DVM). Learn more and meet our team here.
