Dental

We humans have it drilled into us from a young age to brush our teeth twice a day, use dental floss and mouthwash. We know that our teeth are an important part of our health care routine. Your fur baby’s teeth are just as important for them to stay healthy.

Checking your pet’s oral health is not only about their breath. Dental health and overall health are connected. That is why you need to have their teeth and gums checked at least once a year. Crofton Downs Veterinary clinic are standing by to help you with your pet’s dental hygiene.

The plaque that we get on our teeth and remove daily builds up on the teeth of pets too. You can’t leave plaque untreated; it calcifies and turns into a solid known as tartar. Tartar can lead to gingivitis and periodontal disease.

Periodontal disease is very painful to pets. Pets often keep eating in spite of dental pain, because they have to choose between pain or starving.

Just like with people, infected teeth can cause infection in other body organs, such as the heart and kidneys.

We offer a full service dental and oral surgery service, depending on your pets needs. General anaesthesia is needed is needed to properly clean and assess your pets teeth. Some groomers offer a teeth cleaning service, but beware that this only cleans above the gum line and hence is only cosmetic. In order to treat periodontal disease it is necessary to clean below the gum line with an ultrasonic scaler like we have.

Under anaesthesia we probe your pets teeth to assess for periodontal disease or painful resorptive lesions. We have also just invested in a state of the art dental x-ray unit to better assess what is going on beneath the gum line, just as your dentisy does.

Should your pet need extraction of painful/ diseased teeth, we are able to perform surgical extractions.