Dental appointments :
Follow-up appointments may seem like a formality to many dental patients. Attending your follow-up appointments, on the other hand, is critical to ensuring proper healing and allowing your dentist to detect potential problems early on. If you skip your check-ups, you may develop serious dental problems, which can have an impact on your overall health.
Missing dental check-up appointments:
- Following extensive dental work such as tooth extractions, root canal therapy, and dental implant surgery, follow-up appointments are usually recommended.
- Your follow-up appointment is intended to ensure that your mouth is healing properly and that your teeth are healthy. Even if you believe your mouth is healing properly, a dental professional can detect problems that you may otherwise miss.
- Choosing to skip your follow-up appointments can have serious consequences for your dental and overall health. Small problems that would otherwise go unnoticed can grow into larger ones, requiring additional dental work. These issues may include:
- Infection:
Any oral surgery carries the risk of infection, but some patients are more vulnerable than others. The best way to detect and treat infections is to schedule a follow-up appointment.
- Dry Socket:
If a tooth has been lost or extracted, you may experience dry sockets. Dry sockets form when a blood clot is dislodged and can be painful. During a follow-up visit, your dentist can detect and treat dry sockets.
- Bone Loss:
When a tooth is extracted or lost, the jawbone beneath the extracted or lost tooth can become brittle. The jaw may begin to shrink as bone loss occurs.
- Prolonged Orthodontic Care:
Braces and associated orthodontic treatments are intended to straighten teeth and improve the appearance of a patient’s smile. Throughout the procedure, your dentist will need to make adjustments to ensure that your progress is on track. Braces may not fit properly without follow-up appointments, treatment may be prolonged, and additional orthodontic issues may develop.
Only a dental professional can tell you whether your procedure was successful and whether you are healing properly. Without this expert knowledge, you put your health at risk and may end up in a painful and frustrating situation.
Common Procedures That Necessitate Follow-Up
If your dentist tells you that you need a follow-up appointment after a dental procedure, you must keep it. The following are some of the most common procedures that necessitate follow-up appointments:
- Dental Implants:
It can take several months for the titanium root to fuse naturally with the bone after dental implant surgery, and routine follow-up appointments are required to ensure that the implant is healing properly.
- Extractions
Even minor tooth extractions may necessitate a follow-up appointment to ensure that the gums are healing properly and that there are no signs of infection or dry socket. Sutures are sometimes removed during follow-up appointments.
- Orthodontic Treatment and Braces
Braces and related orthodontic treatments necessitate routine follow-up appointments to ensure proper tooth alignment and progression and to make any necessary adjustments.
- Crowns
The procedure is not complete just because you left the office with a temporary crown. A temporary crown is only intended to last a few weeks and must be replaced with a permanent dental crown during your follow-up visit.
- Emergency Dental Procedures
Most types of dental surgery require a follow-up appointment, especially if the procedure is considered a dental emergency. This is critical when checking for infections, detecting dry sockets, and removing sutures. Temporary treatments may have been used to stop the bleeding or pain, but a more comprehensive surgery will be required to repair the damage completely.
- Dentures
Patients who have had dentures fitted should have follow-up appointments to ensure that the new plates fit properly, are comfortable, and have improved overall functionality.
If you haven’t scheduled a follow-up appointment, it’s not too late! It is still critical for us to ensure that you have healed properly and that you are receiving proper dental care.
Please contact Partha Dental, Skin, and Hair Clinic to schedule your follow-up appointment.
