Is Deep Teeth Cleaning Painful?
Professional dental cleaning is considered the ideal complement to daily oral hygiene at home. It is a deep and intensive cleaning of teeth, carried out by dental experts using special instruments in a dental office. Is professional teeth cleaning useful and necessary? What exactly happens during such an appointment?
Why professional teeth cleaning?
Brushing your teeth twice a day is part of most people's daily routine. So, you might ask yourself why you still need to make an appointment with the dentist to have your teeth professionally cleaned. In fact, it's easy to answer this question: We are unable to remove plaque continuously and completely, even if our oral hygiene is exemplary and conscientious.
What happens during professional teeth cleaning?
Professional dental cleaning is an intensive cleaning performed in a dental office by dental experts (more rarely by dentists themselves) who have undergone specific continuing education. They remove all soft and hard deposits on the surface of your teeth, in the interdental spaces, and in the gum pockets, if you have any.
What do we do for a deep teeth cleaning, and is it painful?
A professional dental cleaning always takes place a little differently from one dental practice to another; there is no absolute standard procedure.
Step One: Remove Hard Deposits
At the beginning of the deep cleaning, we will first examine your teeth thoroughly. After the examination, the serious stuff begins. In this step, we will use a diverse set of tools, for example, hand instruments or ultrasonic devices, to clean the pathogenic deposits and bacteria on your teeth. We will clean in the interdental spaces and also under the gum line as well. The first thing to do is to tackle the hard deposits, i.e. tartar. To better recognize these deposits, some dental experts first stain the teeth with plaque-staining tablets. This makes the deposits clearly visible on your teeth and can be removed in a more targeted manner. In addition, the visual aspect is often impressive for patients, who generally think they have brushed very well. They are often surprised by the presence of fairly large blue or red areas. This is probably the most uncomfortable part of deep cleaning. Many patients feel slight discomfort during this part because we are going under your gums to get at hard to remove plaque and tartar. In this phase, we can administer a local anesthesia to help with any pain you might feel.
Step Two: Remove Soft Deposits
Once the tartar has been removed, it is the turn of the soft dental plaque. Here too, very different cleaning techniques can be used with manual and electric instruments:
- Interdental brushes
- Dental floss
- ultrasound
- Powder jet
- Sandblasting
- Airflow or
- Water jet devices
Step 3: Polishing
Once the gums and teeth have been freed from bacteria and pathogenic deposits, the "polishing" procedure now takes place. This means that your teeth are now polished so that the surfaces are nice and smooth again. After the plaque has been removed, they are actually rough - and this is precisely what caries bacteria particularly like; this is where they like to settle. On smooth surfaces, they find it much harder to do so, which prevents new plaque from forming quickly. Your teeth are polished with a rotating brush and polishing paste. Many patients find this step of professional teeth cleaning very pleasant.
Deep teeth cleaning is generally an easy procedure, depending on the state of your teeth and how long it’s been since you last had a professional cleaning. While some patients might feel a bit uncomfortable, we take care to make sure it is as pleasant as possible. Contact us today to find out more!