Is Scale & Root Planing Painful?

Dental mobile scaling and root planing is a non-surgical procedure that your dentist may recommend if you are diagnosed with periodontal disease. Inflamed and bleeding gums accompanied by bad breath are signs of periodontitis. Poor oral hygiene or even genetics can lead to poor gum health. Not managing periodontal disease can lead to a need for gum surgery, bone loss and even tooth loss. Scaling and root planing is the first step to healing your gums.

Is Dental Scaling Necessary?

In order to restore the health of your gums, scaling may be necessary to remove excessive plaque and bacteria build up. Gum recession is a side effect that can require surgery but can be slowed or stopped using scaling and root planing. Often referred to as a deep cleaning, scaling can help heal the affected areas.

Tools Used for Scaling and Root Planing

Your dentist or hygienist may use one or both of the following to perform your scaling:

• Hand-held instruments: Manually removing the plaque and bacteria from below the gum line using a dental scaler is a common method. This allows your provider to feel the areas that need attention, ensuring that nothing is left and everything is smooth.
• Ultrasonic instruments: This method uses a vibrating scaling tip that sprays water. The vibration helps your provider scrape the plaque and the water flushes the debris out of the pocket.

Is Scaling Painful?

To help ease the discomfort of scaling below the gum line, your dentist or hygienist will administer a local anesthetic to numb the area to be worked on. Most of the time your provider will have you schedule your deep cleaning over two or more visits. This is so that you will not have your entire mouth numbed all at once and keep you from having to keep your mouth open for an extensive amount of time. You may choose to schedule two visits in which one side at a time will be treated, or four appointments, having one quadrant completed at a time.

Once your treatment is complete, you may experience some sensitivity and slight swelling and bleeding as your gums heal. This should only last a few days and can be eased with the use of toothpaste for sensitivity and an antiseptic mouthwash.

Before Scaling and Root Planing

If you are a patient that needs to premedicate with an antibiotic before dental procedures, this is a treatment that will require you to take your medication at each visit. Patients with heart disease, artificial joints and other medical issues will need to consult their dentist and make sure they are up to date with your health history.

It is important to improve your oral hygiene habits once you have completed scale and root planing treatment. Periodontal disease can exacerbate other health problems and if left untreated, can cause tooth loss. Your dentist and hygienist may recommend that you have a more frequent schedule for your routine cleanings, which will be considered periodontal maintenance instead of a simple prophylaxis. Every three to four months is a common schedule for perio maintenance.

More on Scale & Root Planing : Scaling and Root Planing Aftercare