Dental Radiology

                       Dental Radiology

            Atwood animal hospital aims to provide the best possible care for your pet at all times.  This includes full mouth radiographs when preforming a dental prophylasis. This increases the quality of dental care.  Dental care is very important, and is sometimes over looked.  Before we even touch the teeth, we take radiographs.  The patient is anesthetized and views of the  mouth are taken in a fashion where all the teeth are viewed.  By taking these radiographs we can look under the gum line, jaw and bone.  We can see the roots of all the teeth.  Sometimes a tooth can look perfectly healthy above the gumline, and be unhealthy under the gumline.  It can have a broken root for example, and cause an infection.  This way we can note any problems, and have an idea of which teeth have to be extracted if needed.   It is also important to radiograph the teeth because there can actually be roots under the gumline, where a tooth used to be.  It could have broke, or never fully formed.  Both of these can cause infections or problems.

This is the dental radiology station.  There are multiple settings for different teeth, and for animals from small to large.

Before dental prophylaxsis.  This dog has a grade 3 in dental disease out of 4, 4 being the worst.  You can see how red and inflammed the gingiva is.  Also note the tarter near the gumline.  If you look close enough you can see some puss around the teeth.

This is after the dental cleaning.  There is some slight staining on the canines, but otherwise most of the teeth were healthy.  They were scaled, polished and fluorided.  This dog was lucky and did not need any extractions. 

Getting into position to Radiograph the upper left premolars.

Radiographing the upper left side (premolars and molars).

Radiograph of the full left side from premolar to molar on a canine.  (Patient above).

   An example of an upper right      Lower right