When You Need Periodontal Treatment, Get all the Facts First
Finding out you need gum or oral surgery can feel like a stressful experience, even if you’ve noticed symptoms and suspected it for a while. If you’re in Suffolk or Nassau County, NY, the excellent news is Farber Center dentist offices in Hauppauge and Medford NY provide the most advanced periodontal surgery Long Island has to offer. Newer procedures with lasers are faster, effective, and much more comfortable. Obtaining more information to see if one of those periodontal treatments can help you is one of the best first steps you can take. You know you want to save your teeth and avoid any further gum of dental problems, so it best to take action now and not put things off.
In the beginning, gingival surgery required opening the gums, cleaning and treating the infected areas underneath and sewing them shut with sutures. It was a more invasive approach, a certain amount of healthy tissue was lost, and there were traditional surgical side effects such as bleeding, swelling, and discomfort. Of course, the long-term benefits of old-fashioned surgery made it worth the ordeal. But dentists, periodontists, and patients alike were open to any innovations that would bring similarly good results with less discomfort, fewer side effects, and faster recovery times. When you visit Farber Center, we cover all potential treatment options, including newer, more comfortable methods.
How is Laser Gum Surgery Different for Me as a Patient?
For you, as a patient, laser surgery is more comfortable – no incisions nor sutures – as well as being faster and highly effective. To provide more detail, we can take a look at the LAR/LANAP procedure offered at Farber Center as an example. LAR = Laser-Assisted Regeneration and LANAP + Laser-Assisted New Attachment Protocol. They are the only FDA-cleared treatments for bone regeneration and gum reattachment to the teeth. Both of these are critically important in periodontal surgery. LAR/LANAP is made possible by the PerioLase MVP-7, which is a specialized dental laser that can be directed below the gumline to kill harmful bacteria that damage your teeth and gums.
During the LANAP procedure, the laser is directed into the pockets between your tooth and gum to immediately kill and eradicate bacteria, diseased tissue, and pathogenic proteins. Ultrasonic scaling in the pocket further cleans the area. Also, the PerioLase MVP-7 stimulates bone regrowth during the procedure before a clot is formed to seal the pocket, reattach the gum and allow healing to begin. Your experience undergoing LANAP will be significantly more comfortable than with traditional gingival surgery, and no healthy tissue will be lost. Years of research and the specialization of medical lasers for dental and periodontal use makes these breakthrough treatments possible.
What if I Need Periodontal Surgery to Save Dental Implants?
Dental implants are a significant investment, and if they become infected, treatment of the surrounding gum tissue is essential. A procedure known as LAPIP (Laser-Assisted Peri-Implant Protocol) is a newer laser surgery alternative that can produce highly effective results. Again, with the Perio-Lase MVP-7, the inflamed pocket next to the implant is opened, bacteria killed, cleaned, and then resealed to begin healing. Saving your dental implants is essential to your smile, a firm bite, and your oral health, so it’s always worth trying to treat any tooth infections that may occur. With laser methods, downtimes are shorter, discomfort is minimized, and bacteria and pathogenic proteins are killed.
Preserving your oral health is important to holistic dentistry and vital to whole-body health because the mouth interacts with other major systems in the body, including your heart and circulatory system. Clearing the low-grade infections that are present in periodontal disease with laser gum surgery is essential. Farber Center provides a range of treatment options and always is available and ready to discuss with you all possible procedures. If you’ve experienced discomfort, routinely floss and notice bleeding, have swelling or other similar symptoms, it’s wise to have them checked because you may need periodontal treatment or in the very least teeth cleaning by a dental hygenist– and if you already have been advised to have gum surgery, don’t delay. Modern treatments make it much less unpleasant, and restoring your oral health is an urgent priority.
