Dentistry

Periodontal disease is described in the veterinary literature as the most common disease of adult dogs and cats, and most of it sits below the gumline where an awake exam cannot see it. That single fact shapes how the dental guidelines are written. The AAHA dental care guidelines and the WSAVA Global Dental Guidelines both treat general anesthesia, periodontal probing of every tooth, and intraoral radiography as the basis of a complete assessment, and both state positions against dental scaling performed without anesthesia.

This hub brings together our reference guides on the assessment itself and on the conditions it finds, along with dental news as we report it. The guides follow the nomenclature and staging systems of the American Veterinary Dental College, since those are what referral dentists and the published literature use. Periodontal disease is staged by attachment loss, from gingivitis alone through advanced periodontitis. Tooth resorption is staged by how much of the tooth is involved and typed by its radiographic appearance, and the type determines which treatments the literature supports. Dental charting uses the modified Triadan numbering system and a standard set of abbreviations so that a chart written in one hospital can be read in another.

Dentistry is the clinical service in which technician utilization is most visible. In most states a credentialed technician may perform the cleaning, probing, charting, and radiographs under supervision, while diagnosis, extractions, and other oral surgery are reserved to the veterinarian by the practice act. The guides separate the steps accordingly and point to the state board as the authority on scope, because the rules differ by state and we do not paraphrase them into a single national standard.

For practice owners and managers, dentistry is also a scheduling and pricing problem. A procedure whose full extent is unknown until the patient is anesthetized and radiographed makes an accurate estimate difficult, and the guidelines discuss how to set client expectations before the day of the procedure. The guides cover that communication step, the equipment the guidelines consider standard, and the home-care recommendations that follow, with products described only as the sources describe them. As elsewhere in this library, the pages summarize published guidance and are not a treatment plan for an individual animal.