How often should pocket measurements be taken?

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

nonsense@mynonsense.net - 22 May 2009 04:18 GMT

A 65-year-old relative of mine has been seeing a solo practitioner
dentist for the past four years. Only in this last visit did he
perform a pocket measurement. He said one tooth was as high as 10 and
recommended doing scaling.

Shouldn't he have done pocket measurements sooner and recommended the
scaling before this problem got to be so bad? My oral hygienist does
the measurements every year.

Reply to this Message

tenthmed - 22 May 2009 05:35 GMT

On May 21, 11:18 pm, nonse...@mynonsense.net wrote:

> A 65-year-old relative of mine has been seeing a solo practitioner
> dentist for the past four years. Only in this last visit did he
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> scaling before this problem got to be so bad? My oral hygienist does
> the measurements every year.

Probing should be done once per year. 10mm is beyond scaling/root
planing's effectiveness, but it is a good starting point for treatment.

Reply to this Message

Amatus Cremona - 23 May 2009 13:33 GMT

Perhaps a probing was done at each visit, but was normal up until now and
did not need to be discussed or charted.

One solitary 10 mm pocket is sometimes due to a fracture root. It may not
have been cracked two weeks earlier.

AC

>A 65-year-old relative of mine has been seeing a solo practitioner
> dentist for the past four years. Only in this last visit did he
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> scaling before this problem got to be so bad? My oral hygienist does
> the measurements every year.

Reply to this Message