Pet Dental Cleanings and Oral Care/Extractions

Our clinic offers in-house dental prophylaxis procedures to clean your pet's teeth. We use the IM-3 Deluxe veterinary dental machine to scale and polish your pet's teeth in order to remove plaque and tartar. This machine features an ultrasonic scaler and polisher, as well as a high-speed drill for use in extracting teeth.

Dental prophylaxis is performed under general anesthesia in order to accomplish thorough scaling

We also perform dental xrays and extraction of teeth when necessary, to eliminate pain and infection. All extractions involve prevention of pain by our staff: local anesthetic nerve blocks, pre- and post-operative injectable pain medications, and close monitoring for any signs of oral pain are standard of care for dental surgery at our clinic.

The painful feline resorptive lesion pictured above is one situation in which extraction alleviates pain and stops the inevitable progression of this disease process.

Periodontal disease starts with the formation of plaque, a transparent adhesive fluid composed of mucin, sloughed epithelial cells, and aerobic, gram positive cocci. Plaque starts forming twelve hours after dental cleaning.

If the plaque is not removed, mineral salts in the food will precipitate to form hard dental calculus, or tartar. The calculus is irritating to the gingival tissue, changing the pH of the mouth, allowing pathogenic aerobic gram negative bacteria to survive subgingivally (under the gumline).

By-products of these bacteria "eat away" at the tooth's support structures eventually causing the tooth to be lost. The photos above illustrate tartar, gingivitis, and periodontal disease.

We encourage all owners to use home pet dental care on a daily basis,

and to regularly "Flip the Lip" and evaluate the teeth for any problems.

See our Home Dental Care for Pets segment on this web site

for more information on how you can help prevent oral disease in your pet.