Periodontal or gum disease happens when bacteria gets below the gum line and the attachment between the gum and tooth is lost. Three out of four Americans have some form of periodontal disease and only 3 out of 100 will ever get treated before its too late.
Gum disease is a silent, chronic, painless and communicable bacterial infection that often goes undetected or ignored until severe gum and bone destruction is unbearable and no longer able to be ignored. Left untreated, gum disease can cause tooth loss and traditional treatment can hurt.
The latest conservative gum therapy uses a laser. The laser gently disinfects and evaporates diseased tissues from around the tooth and inside the gum pocket. This treatment interrupts the bacterial destruction of the tissues and bone, giving the gum pocket a chance to heal. Systematically repeated visits, generally, 2-8, allow the gum pocket to be disease-free and sometimes allow tissues to reattach to the pocket to a normal or near-normal depth. This new laser therapy is gentle, less painful, and has a quick recovery. While surgery may still be indicated for severely advanced periodontal cases, laser therapy is a much more conservative, effective and comfortable option for beginning to moderate periodontal cases.
Here are some of the major benefits associated with laser dentistry:
- Procedures performed using soft tissue dental lasers may not require sutures.
- Certain laser dentistry procedures do not require anesthesia.
- Laser dentistry minimizes bleeding because the high-energy light beam aids in the clotting of exposed blood vessels, thus inhibiting blood loss.
- Bacterial infections are minimized because the high-energy beam sterilized the area being worked on.
- Damage to surrounding tissue is minimized.
- Wounds heal faster and tissues can be regenerated.
The soft-tissue laser at North Star Dental Care can be used to treat gum disease, cold sores, ulcerations, and acute gum infections around erupting teeth. But it has cosmetic uses, too, when it is used to re-contour uneven or overgrown gumlines. Dr. Bassil is proud to be able to offer laser dentistry to its patients in need.
Call us at 610-365-5000 for an appointment.