Does My Pet Need Dental Care Too?
Dental care and maintaining a healthy mouth is extremely important to your pet’s overall well-being. Not doing so can lead spread of the infection and toxins through blood stream to kidney, liver and heart disease and can reduce the life expectancy of your pet considerably. Dental care is often one of the most underestimated parts of your pet’s overall health care. Comprehensive dental examinations and dental procedures are very important in order to maintain healthy teeth for your pet.
How do I know if my pet needs dental cleaning?
The most common sign of dental disease is your pet’s bad breath. Bacteria and other germs in between teeth and under the gum line can produce toxic materials. This in turn can cause dental cavities, bleeding of the gums, gum recession, plaque buildup, and loose teeth. If you notice any of these symptoms in your dog or cat, please seek veterinary advice. An annual teeth cleaning will help keep your pet’s teeth and mouth healthy and prevent discomfort for your pet.
Does my pet need pre-anesthetic Blood work?
Our veterinarians strongly recommend pre-anesthetic blood work for all patients undergoing anesthesia to ensure safety and to assess organ functions, clotting times and blood cell counts. Teeth or gum diseases can cause a lot of health hazard to your pet, and can affect vital organs like heart, Kidneys and liver. Pre-anesthetic blood testing along with physical exam allows us to estimate anesthetic and surgical risk. Many diseases that can pose anesthetic risk may not be detected on a physical exam alone but several clues may be identified on blood work.
Does dental cleaning require anesthesia?
Pets do not understand the significance of dental hygiene. Attempting to do a dental cleaning without anesthesia is dangerous to your pet and also to the technician /doctor doing the dental procedure as your pet may even try to bite. A professional dental cleaning is nearly impossible without anesthesia. At cornerstone Animal Hospital, we take extra care of the safety of your loved pets just like your family doctor does for you during a procedure, and therefore relatively safe anesthetic procedure similar to human anesthesia is used as a standard protocol. At Cornerstone Animal Hospital, we customize anesthetic protocols to fit to the species (Large dogs to pocket pets), age groups (young to geriatric) and different disease conditions (healthy pet to those with heart/liver/kidney problems). Various combinations of different modern anesthetic medications are used to provide a safe and comfortable anesthetic experience for all our patients.
Anesthesia Monitoring
The staff at Cornerstone Animal Hospital are well experienced in anesthesia management and we employ sophisticated digital equipment. A trained technician monitor Heart Rate, Respiration, Oxygen Saturation, Blood Pressure, Body temperature and other vital parameters all throughout the procedure. Placing an Intravenous (IV) catheter and IV fluid are part of the mandatory protocol for any dental anesthetic procedure. Any anesthetic procedure can be risky, but the benefits outweigh the minor risks involved.
Dental Cleaning and Polishing
At Cornerstone Animal Hospital we offer a thorough evaluation of your pet’s teeth. We encourage pre-anesthetic blood work in order to evaluate organ functions and to make sure your pet is safe to be anesthetized. Our high speed dental machine is very similar to what human dentists use in order to clean your own teeth. Additionally, a dental X-Ray will help to reveal many of the underlying teeth conditions not visible on physical examination, and therefore is highly recommended.
Teeth Extractions
Unhealthy, infected and loose teeth are evaluated by our North Richland Hills veterinarian and may have to be extracted using our safe techniques. Some of the larger 2 or 3 rooted teeth extractions will necessitate surgical procedures like when your wisdom teeth are removed. If your pet needs complicated dental or oral procedures such as crowning, root canals, jaw fracture repair, etc., we will address your pet’s specific needs through a specialist appointment with veterinary dentist.
Typically, losing an infected tooth is better than having an aching infected tooth that causes a lot of discomfort to your pet. At Cornerstone Animal Hospital, pain medications and antibiotic coverage before and after the procedure will be strongly recommended by our veterinarian to ensure that your pet is safe and as comfortable as possible.
For more information on pet dental care, please don’t hesitate to contact us today at (817) 514-8387.