Pet Dental Cleanings

Pet Dental Cleanings

Our priority at Animal Dental Care and Oral Surgery Fort Collins is to provide world-class care for your pet. Annual professional dental cleanings under anesthesia are essential in maintaining your dog or cat’s overall health. You can depend on us for safe and comprehensive dental cleaning as well as reducing stress and anxiety for your pet during their visit.

Every professional dental cleaning starts with a review of the patient’s general health and previous dental history. Each pet has a specific anesthesia plan formulated for their individual needs, which may include medications to be given prior to the procedure. Your pet will receive a complete physical and oral exam and pre-anesthetic blood work before anesthesia.

What Happens During Pet Dental Cleanings?

Our procedures are based on the standards set by the American Veterinary Dental CollegeTM (AVDC). We refer to our dental cleaning treatments by an acronym known as COHAT (comprehensive oral health assessment and treatment).

  1. After placing a patient under general anesthesia, a licensed veterinary technician or board-certified anesthesiologist will monitor your pet’s heart rate and rhythm, breathing, blood pressure, and body temperature.
  2. After diagnostic imaging which includes a cone beam CT and full mouth dental radiography, which cannot be performed during an anesthesia free dental cleaning, a complete oral exam will be performed by a board-certified veterinary dentist TM or resident. Each tooth and all of the oral structures are closely examined and mobility, furcation exposure, and periodontal pockets are measured at many points of each tooth and noted in the dental chart. The diagnostic imaging allows us to see abnormalities that cannot be seen with just our eyes including tooth root abscesses, teeth fractured under the gumline, and dead teeth that could be causing your pet discomfort.
  3. You will be contacted to discuss the findings, and we will review a treatment plan with you. Depending on the extent of the disease, we will partner with you to decide on a treatment plan that fits your pet’s best interest. With your consent, most treatments are completed on the same day.
  4. The dental cleaning is performed next, to make the oral cavity as clean as possible prior to a procedure being performed, but sometimes all your pet needs is a cleaning. The cleaning removes dental plaque and calculus above and below the gumline, which cannot be performed during an anesthesia free dental cleaning. The plaque and calculus are removed with ultrasonic and hand dental scalers. Following scaling, the teeth are polished to remove residual plaque and to smooth the tooth surface.  Certain plaque retardant products such as Oravet® or SANOS® can be applied at the end of the procedure if you wish.
  5. Certain dental procedures can be painful, such as extractions or tumor removal.  Pain prevention is taken very seriously at our clinic with multimodal pain relief, including local anesthesia, injectable pain medication, and pain medication to go home.
  6. We monitor our patients closely post-operatively until they have recovered enough to go home. We like to make sure that your pet has recovered well, and it is safe to travel home. If your pet has had oral surgery performed, they will likely be on a soft food diet and toy restriction for 14 days.
  7. Discharge and care instructions will be emailed to you and reviewed when you pick up your pet. You will be provided with the cell phone number of a doctor in case you need to reach someone after hours and you will be contacted the next day to ensure your pet continues to recover well at home.
  8. The final step of the COHAT is partnering to create an at-home dental care plan that works best for you and your pet. Although the cleaning helps control periodontal disease, plaque bacteria start to proliferate soon after the cleaning has been performed. For this reason, at home oral care is imperative for preventing or treating periodontal disease. Though daily tooth brushing is the best way to prevent or treat periodontal disease, there are many at home oral health products available that can be used in addition to tooth brushing.
  9. Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule about how often your pet should receive anesthetized diagnostic imaging and dental cleanings. This is largely due to variations in current levels of disease, head shape, genetic predisposition, and frequency of at home brushing. Every pet is an individual and so is their oral health.

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