What is a COE and why do you need one of these? And why more than once in a lifetime?
Well, here's the thing. We aren't going to place you on autopilot mode, cross our fingers and wish on a start that we are blindly making an impact. As much as that would make our lives easier, if we place you on a cleaning schedule and never stop to look and see if it's working we could be leading you into the fire. We all age, unless you know something we don't, and with age comes wear and tear. We need to monitor if we are maintaining your gum health, or is it slipping before our eyes. Sometimes we need to make your cleaning a little longer and re measure your probing depths and monitor bleeding on probing to see where we are still experiencing disease and possible destruction of the tissues.
So basically. We clean under your gums to stop the potential destruction from the bacteria under there from causing your tissues to pull away from your teeth. We do an in depth measurement upon becoming an adult or during your intro to our office to see what your pocketing, or lack there of, is. If we see the process of destruction is happening we increase your cleaning frequency and measure every so often to confirm its working and there is no more destruction. That's the game. How frequently do we need to remove the bacteria to stop the tissue from slowly pulling away from your teeth because this leads to the potential you lose your teeth. Why would you risk losing your teeth? because there would be nothing left holding them in place.
So here's the thing. It takes time and it may seem pointless to you to take that extra time to run around in your mouth with our perio probe, but it is the deciding factor as to whether or not we are doing a good job. Don't you want to know those facts.
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