3 Tips For Rehabilitating Your Smile After Major Periodontal Disease

Advanced periodontal disease can seriously affect the entire mouth. For some people, the only option is a complete rehabilitation of their gums and teeth. Rehabilitating your smile can help you achieve healthy gums and improve the aesthetic of your teeth.

Commit To Change

Although periodontal disease can occur due to factors beyond your control, there may be factors you could have changed to slow the progression of the disease. When you want to rehabilitate your smile, you must be ready to commit to changes in your oral care and lifestyle in order to minimize recurrent problems. Having a good oral care routine will help. This includes regular brushing and flossing in addition to using specialty products. For example, if you have problems with dry mouth, you might need specialty oral care products that help with saliva production. Some mouthwashes are antimicrobial so they help reduce bacteria that can lead to periodontal disease. Reducing sugary and acidic foods and beverages in your diet can help protect your enamel. Part of the changes you need to make will be visiting your dentist regularly, perhaps more often than in the past.

Rehabilitate Your Gums

Part of your overall rehabilitation will be treating periodontal disease. Scaling and planing is a procedure used to reduce pockets of inflammation in your gums. You will likely need multiple treatments since "deep cleaning" is typically done in quadrants. When you have severe periodontal disease, you might need multiple deep cleanings for each quadrant to fully eliminate the problem. Your dentist may require additional treatments beyond deep cleanings. This can include oral surgery to help encourage healthy gum tissue to grow. Your dentist may remove damaged areas of your gums and wait to see how much gum tissue regrows before deciding how to proceed with additional gum therapies or tooth restoration.

Choose The Right Tooth Restoration Method

When your entire mouth needs rehabilitation after periodontal disease, there may be some teeth that can be salvaged. If you choose to salvage any teeth you will need procedures, such as crowns, to cover the affected tooth. This not only improves the aesthetic, but it will improve the function of your affected teeth as well. In some cases, there may be many teeth that cannot be saved or you might decide it is not worth the extra money and effort to save only a few teeth when the others must be extracted. You might find it is easier or more economical to invest in dental implants or dentures. The options available can depend on how much healthy bone you have. Periodontal disease can also affect the underlying bone, making it harder to have successful dental implants. Your dentist might try bone grafting if there are thin areas of bone that cannot support an implant.

Advanced periodontal disease can make you feel like you will never smile again. Fortunately, there are many procedures available to fully restore your teeth and improve the health of your gums.