Can Professional Dental Cleanings Reduce the Risk of Heart Attack?
Heart attacks are among the fatal problems that one could encounter in life. While you may survive after several heart attacks, it puts you at great risk. Besides, many other things you may want to do may not pan out as you wish. However, when caring for your dental health, do not avoid visiting a dentist near you just because you previously had a heart attack. In fact, visiting your dentist can help you realize how much you need dental care, but within the confines of protecting your heart’s health.
What Is Dental Cleaning?
It is a process of keeping your oral cavity clean, free from harmful bacteria, plaque, and tartar. The entire teeth cleaning/cleaning teeth focuses on boosting your oral hygiene. However, how you do it at home is not the same way our dentists at Encanto Family Dental Care do it. The professional teeth cleaning process is more thorough, focusing on parts of your mouth that may be hard to reach by yourself.
Why Are Dental Cleanings Important?
Dental cleanings done by a dental hygienist or dentist have many benefits that are fundamental for excelling in oral health, including the following:
- Preventing cavities – Dental caries can occur at any age, even though they are more predominant for children and teenagers. Cavities affect the tooth structure and damage nerve endings in your teeth. Since plaque buildup is the underlying cause of tooth cavities, dental cleanings are the ultimate tools for preventing teeth.
- Bad breath – you usually have an odor in your mouth when you have oral infections. Ideally, if you are not keen enough to keep a clean mouth, food residues will begin to release a bad smell. Worse, when the food particles mix with saliva, it releases acids that cause teeth to rot. When you develop plaque and tartar, you will continually battle with bad breath that persists even with drinking water.
- Gum diseases – the potential of an infection of your gums significantly heightens when you slack in oral hygiene. The plaque on the surfaces of your teeth will usually settle at the lower parts of the teeth, closest to the gums. It eventually spreads the infection to the soft tissues, leading to mouth sores, swelling, and bleeding gums. Eventually, you may need urgent care at an emergency dental in Phoenix when the infection progresses into periodontitis that causes tooth loss.
What Entails a Professional Dental Cleaning Treatment?
When you visit a dentist for dental cleaning, various steps will entail your treatment. First, the dentist evaluates the state of your dental cavity. For your first time, the teeth cleaning process will look a little different from the typical routine dental cleanings.
After the exam, scaling and root planing will follow. These steps help scrape off plaque and tartar from the surfaces of your mouth. The dentist will focus on the corners of your mouth where tartar may have formed over time.
The dentist then starts to clean your mouth using an electric-powered toothbrush and special dental toothpaste. The teeth brushing is usually thorough for reaching even the back teeth of your mouth that are otherwise difficult to clean. After brushing, your dental attendant will floss your teeth to target the spaces in between your teeth that may not often get the necessary attention. Afterward, your dentist will apply fluoride varnish to offer extra protection in your teeth against infections.
Dental Cleanings After Heart Attacks
Having a heart attack does not necessarily mean that you have to abandon every other health practice you had just to tend to your heart’s health. It only means that you have to do everything calculatedly to avoid aggravating the condition of your heart, leading to another heart attack. It is why your cardiologist will require that you run your medical decisions through him/her, ensuring you remain safe at all times.
When it comes to dental cleaning procedures, no surgery is involved. It means that you do not need to worry about being under the knife, bleeding too much, or being in severe pain. However, choose a dental clinic equipped with oxygen and nitroglycerin in case of an emergency during your procedure. If you are anxious about undergoing a dental procedure soon after your heart attack, ask your dentist for a different date. Usually, dental cleanings need about 3 or 6 months before you need to return for another session. You could push your appointment to a later date until you feel more confident about the procedure.