The disease is where you cannot see it
By age three most dogs and cats have some periodontal disease, and most of it sits below the gumline. Dental radiographs routinely reveal painful root disease under teeth that look perfectly healthy from above.
This is why an awake examination cannot tell you whether your pet's mouth is healthy. It can tell you about tartar. Tartar is not the problem — it is the visible part of a problem that lives underneath.
Why 'anesthesia-free dental cleaning' does not treat disease
Scaling visible tartar from an awake animal makes the teeth look better. It does not probe pockets, it does not radiograph roots, it does not reach below the gumline, and it does not extract diseased teeth. The mouth looks cleaner and the painful disease is untreated — and now harder to spot.
What a full dental includes
A dental procedure worth the anesthesia involves all of the following, every time.
- Full-mouth dental radiographs under anesthesia
- Charting of every tooth, pocket depth and root
- Ultrasonic scaling above and below the gumline, then polishing
- Extraction of diseased teeth with closed sutured sites
- Local nerve blocks in addition to systemic pain control
Signs worth a conversation
Dental pain in animals is easy to miss, because they keep eating. They change how they eat rather than stopping.
- Bad breath that has become hard to ignore
- Chewing on one side, or dropping food
- Red or bleeding gums
- Pawing at the mouth, or shying away from face contact
- A tooth that is discoloured, fractured, or loose
Recovery
Most patients go home the same evening. Soft food for 7–10 days if extractions were performed, and most pets eat normally within 24 to 48 hours. Sutures dissolve on their own, so there is no second visit to remove them.
Pets manage remarkably well after extractions, including full-mouth extractions in cats, because the extracted teeth were already painful. Many owners report their pet is noticeably brighter within a week — which is usually the clearest evidence of how uncomfortable the mouth had been.
General information only, and not a substitute for examining your pet. Every animal is different — talk to us or to your own veterinarian before making a decision.
