Periodontics

What is Laser Bacterial Reduction?

Sep 6 • 1 minute read

We are constantly learning and striving to advance the standard of patient care in our office. As such, we have recently added a new procedure to your preventative care appointment to help fight periodontal disease.

Gum and bone disease affect approximately 80% of adults and is a growing epidemic in our society. Understanding of this disease has increased greatly over the last few years. Periodontal Disease is a bacterial infection in the pockets around the teeth. We not only treat Periodontal disease by removal of mechanical irritants and diseased tissue (your normal cleaning) but are also addressing the underlying infection that causes it. With that thought in mind, we recommend that all of our patients have their teeth decontaminated prior to cleaning appointments for 3 major reasons.

1. To reduce or eliminate bacteria. During the normal cleaning process, most patients will have some areas that may bleed. This allows bacteria that are present in all of our mouths to flood into the bloodstream and sometimes settle in the weakened areas of our body. For example, areas such as a damaged heart valve or artificial knee or hip. We pre-medicate those patients that we know have a heart condition or artificial joints with antibiotics so that these bacteria do not cause harm. Research shows that these oral pathogens have now been linked to a number of other diseases such as cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, low birth weight babies, diabetes, etc. Needless to say, anything that we can do to reduce or eliminate these bacteremias, is in our patients’ best interest.

2. To prevent cross-contamination of infection in one area of your mouth to other areas. Decontamination minimizes the chance that we may pick up bacterial infection in one area of your mouth and move it to another.

3. To kill periodontal disease bacteria and stop infection before they cause physical destruction of gum and bone around your teeth.

The laser decontamination process is painless and normally takes about 5-10 minutes. We highly recommend that you take advantage of this service as part of your routine cleaning. Contact Dr. Derek Fika to schedule your cleaning today!


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