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DR. MICHAEL TISCHLER: Well, gum disease is one of the founding concepts of Tischler Dental that we address. And the reason I say that is the ramifications of a patient having gum disease is beyond what happens in your mouth. It affects your heart. It affects women with—as far as pre-term birth in pregnancy. It affects diabetes. It affects your lungs. So your whole body is affected. And we are on a mission in this practice to make sure our patients don’t have gum disease. We have three dental hygienists that address us in our practice.

And the very first thing we do when a patient comes in is we will look at the health of their gums. What we do is we actually measure with something called a periodontal probe to objectively see how deep the pockets are between the gum and the tooth. And when they reach greater than 4 millimeters, I would say, and there is bleeding, there is different modalities that we can do in this practice to get rid of it. And one of the first things we are going to do is we are going to work with our patients with respect to increasing their home care.

A lot of times people have gum disease because they haven’t done the correct things at home. They haven’t come into the—into a dental office for cleanings. So we are going to work with you as a first line of defense. And if that isn’t successful, then my hygienists have a deep tissue program that involves using a local anesthesia, Novacaine, and localized antibiotics. And we can, in a very predictable and effective way, get rid of most gum disease in our practice with that technique.

If gum disease progresses to the point where the pockets are deeper, and there is bone loss and tooth mobility, and deep scaling hasn’t been effective, then I do periodontal surgery in the practice, which I have done for the last ten years. And that is when we go in surgically and reposition the gum and contour the bone to make sure that the supporting structures for the soft tissue is healthy.