Pet Dental For Dogs And Cats

Regular professional cleaning is important to maintaining your pet’s oral health and overall well-being. Periodontal disease develops when plaque and tartar build-up under a pet’s gum line, separating gum from teeth to form pockets of bacterial growth. This can not only be very painful, but can cause infection, abscess, bone loss, and loss of teeth. This damage is irreversible and can lead to other disease processes such as kidney disease and/or kidney failure. Therefore, we strongly recommend regular dental cleanings as well as preventive home care for all pets. We have extensive training in advanced canine and feline dentistry, performing procedures such as surgical extractions, crown reductions, bone grafting, care of stomatitis and abscessed tooth roots, and more.

Dental cleaning requires general anesthesia because of the necessity to clean under the gum line, where periodontal disease causes the most problems. Dental cleanings performed on awake animals are purely cosmetic, as they do not treat or prevent periodontal disease in any way. In fact, the process of chipping off tartar in a non-anesthetized animal can actually damage tooth enamel and cause further problems later in life. We offer discounted dental packages which incorporate the most advanced techniques in dentistry and anesthesia, including the following:

• Pre-anesthetic sedative to allow for comfortable IV catheter placement and anesthetic induction
• General anesthesia is maintained and monitored by a licensed technician, (as listed above under our general surgery description.)
• IV catheter with fluid administration during anesthesia and throughout recovery. This allows for a safer, more stable plane of anesthesia as well as a safer, smoother recovery
• Circulating hot water blanket to maintain your pet’s temperature while under anesthesia.
• Modern and safe ultrasonic scaling to clean each tooth thoroughly above and below the gum line
• Trained dental technicians polish teeth to create a smooth, lustrous tooth surface more resistant to plaque buildup
• Fluoride treatments to help strengthen enamel and reduce tooth sensitivity
• Antibiotic injection to treat/prevent infection
• Digital dental x-rays (when indicated) to further determine the health of a pet’s teeth and whether extractions are needed.
• Pain injection for patients with more advanced dental disease to prevent sensitivity/pain associated with the cleaning and/or tooth extractions.
• Extractions (only when indicated by x-ray findings). Most extractions are actually considered surgical procedures. They may require a surgical incision to expose tooth roots and allow for easy sectioning and extraction of each individual root. As with any surgical procedure, these extractions are performed only by our trained, experienced veterinarians – not veterinary technicians. We administer not only a 24-hour pain injection but also a local anesthetic at the site of extraction. This allows us to maintain a lower level of gas anesthesia and reduces post-surgical pain in your pet. When we find a significant amount of bone loss at the site of an extraction, we replace this with bone grafting material. In the case of severe infection or abscess at the root of a tooth, we administer a local antibiotic in addition to our routine systemic antibiotic injection. Extraction sites are healed within 2 weeks, after which a pet’s ability to eat should not be affected. Clients have often told us that their furry friend started acting like a puppy or kitten again, once their dental pain was relieved.