Routine dental cleanings and hygiene visits at Thibodaux, LA dentist

At Acadia Family Dentistry, we care about your oral health. This means we place a big emphasis on preventive care in our practice—we love having the opportunity to provide routine dental cleanings and hygiene visits to our Thibodaux, LA area patients and help them prevent painful or costly issues such as cavities, infections, and gum disease.

Why regular dental cleanings are important

Maintaining good oral hygiene is the number one thing you can do to avoid oral health problems. Good oral hygiene and health starts at home with brushing twice per day, flossing every day, and having a healthy diet full of fruits and vegetables rather than sugary snacks and beverages. Even the most diligent of brushers and flossers can miss some of those hard-to-reach areas in the back of their mouths or around crowded teeth, though. When that happens, disease-causing plaque and tartar can form on the surface of teeth, and once tartar has developed, it cannot be removed with brushing and flossing at home. That’s where professional cleanings come in! At routine visits to the dentist to have your teeth professionally cleaned and examined, we eliminate the plaque, tartar, and bacteria from your teeth so you can leave the office with a “clean slate” every six months.

Steps we perform at hygiene visits

Each hygiene visit has several components that are designed to make the most of our time with you. At these visits, we:

• Visually check for issues such as gum disease, cavities, oral cancer, or other problems so that they can be treated early on before they progress and become more difficult to treat
• Take x-rays as needed to check on the health of your underlying tooth structures and jaw bone, which are not visible to the naked eye
• Gently scrape plaque and tartar off of your teeth using specialized dental instruments
• Polish your teeth with a gritty toothpaste to give them a pearly white shine and reduce the surface area for plaque and bacteria to attach to
• Floss your teeth to eliminate any debris or plaque from between your teeth and gums
• Provide a fluoride rinse or apply dental sealants as appropriate to protect your teeth from future decay
• Answer any questions you have about your teeth and how to take care of them

At Acadia Family Dentistry, Dr. Palmer and our entire team want every patient to feel like a member of our dental family, and we look forward to seeing our patients return every six months for their routine preventive care visits. We truly love getting to know you and your family and treat you like the individual that you are, never providing “cookie cutter” care. Call our Thibodaux, LA office to schedule your routine check-up and cleaning today at (985) 303-2920.