Throughout my career one of the cornerstones of my practice has always been to achieve and maintain a state of oral health for my patients. This objective is only achieved through teamwork, which involves,both the Clinic and the Patient:
The Dentist providing high quality treatments together with the Oral Hygienist for both regular dental cleaning and teaching the proper oral hygiene techniques that the Patient must commit to at home in order to maintain good health and preserve his teeth and gums and prolong the lifespan of the treatments.
This is particularly true in patients with Periodontal disease: if you want to slow down and control the progression of the disease frequent visits to the Dental Hygienist and the patients collaboration every day at home are essential.

Periodontal Disease

Periodontal Disease (of the tissues that support the tooth: Gingiva, Ligament and Bone) is a genetic condition that affects a very significant percentage of the population.
This is what we can call a “Silent Killer”, the bacterias present on the dental plaque, in patients with a genetic predisposition, slowly undermine the foundations of the teeth for years without causing many complaints (except gingival bleeding, which many people assume, unfortunately, to be normal) until, usually from the age of fifty onwards, the manifestations are evident:
· Gums seem to “shrink” and Teeth start to get huge and with unsightly spaces between them
· Periodontal infections (abscesses)
· Finally, the tooth becomes loose and ends up having to be extracted or fall out by itself.
There is no cure for this disease and the only way to slow down or even stop its evolution is prevention. It is essential to raise the Dental IQ” of these patients: knowing the cause, evolution, and what is their role in controlling the process is fundamental.

How to treat Periodontal Disease?

How is this achieved:
1. teaching the correct techniques of brushing and interdental cleaning,
2. frequent subgingival cleaning and curettage sessions in the Oral Hygiene consultation (3 or 4 times a year instead of the usual 2 times).
3. only patients who are perfectly controlled and with excellent hygiene should be considered for another type of intervention, namely Periodontal Surgery.

When they tell you that there is no solution for your condition as it is a chronic and hereditary disease and you will end up losing your teeth, this is not necessarily so:

In my experience, I have seen many cases that, with our work and patient colaboration, drastically changed the prognosis.
The vast majority of people who come to me as new patients come for aesthetics which, being a field that I am passionate about and where I have a lot of experience, is not my first priority at all, the priority is always to restore a state of health and often correct situations undiagnosed.

Oral Hygiene Appointment

The Oral Hygiene is of enormous importance in my Clinic https://clinicadentariaemlisboa.com/en/service/general-procedures/
I want to get good results in aesthetics or rehabilitation but I also want these results to last and, even if treatments
of this nature are not carried out, I want my patients to leave the Clinic with the necessary skills to properly look after of themselves.

I chose 3 cases of patients with Periodontal Disease

I’ve recently had two cases of very young women in their late twenties who came to me with huge amounts of tartar , bleeding and sore gums, and who basically felt really bad and were too embarrassed to smile.
These 2 cases are atypical both because of the age of the patients and the complaints or the enormous amount of tartar they presented.
In both cases, they started with several appointments at the Oral Hygiene Consultation (done with local anesthesia because teeth with great gingival recession can be very sensitive).
When everything was under control, with a completely different Periodontal picture, we corrected the aesthetic part with four ceramic veneers on the upper incisors.
Click here to see the before and after: Tooth Whitening and Veneers & Health and Aesthetics in Periodontal Disease

The 3rd case is more typical: a patient in her fifties who came to me for aesthetics.
As usual we started by controlling the Periodontal Disease and then move on to aesthetics:

• Dental Whitening
• 5 ceramic Veneers were placed in the Upper incisor/canine block.

See here the photos of the case

I chose these cases, one of which is extreme, so that everyone can understand that this type of condition can be reversed . It’s possible to have the smile you’ve always dreamed of even with periodontal disease.