Dentistry

Dentistry is not just about pulling teeth. As with people, prevention is key in canine and feline dentistry.

Prevention includes using various products that reduce the buildup of soft plaque on the teeth and, with it, tartar. Besides being unpleasant (discolored teeth, bad breath), tartar also affects the health of your pet. Significant tartar buildup predisposes pets to periodontal disease, which in dogs and cats is very difficult to treat conservatively and, once advanced, usually ends in tooth extraction.

A dental cleaning is a procedure in which an ultrasonic scaler (as in human dentistry) removes accumulated deposits of calcified plaque, i.e. tartar. It is important to note that this procedure can only be performed properly under general anesthesia, in an intubated patient.

Any procedure performed outside general anesthesia should be considered improvisation and unsafe for several reasons.

Some dogs — and some breeds in particular — are more prone to heavy tartar buildup and periodontal disease than other pets. This applies equally to dogs and cats.

To remove tartar completely, it is essential to clean the areas below the gum line and any pockets that have formed. This is a very painful procedure, and if your pet were not under anesthesia, they would not let us do it — certainly not as thoroughly as needed.

Owners often hear from various sources that this can be done without anesthesia — under sedation alone, or even without it. In practice this ends in a sloppy, incomplete procedure that amounts to brushing the teeth rather than removing tartar, certainly not thoroughly.

Keep in mind that performing this procedure on a sedated pet does not mean it is painless, even if the animal does not move during the intervention.

There is another reason it is important for the pet to be under anesthesia and intubated (a special tube placed in the trachea, through which the patient breathes during anesthesia). Intubation prevents the pet from inhaling, during the procedure, the aerosol produced by the ultrasonic scaler — an aerosol full of bacteria that must not reach the airways, especially not in the amounts present during this procedure.