Periodontal Gum Pockets Treatment in Midtown Manhattan, NYC

One of the main signs of gum disease is the development of pockets or spaces around teeth as the gums lose their firm attachment to teeth. These spaces or gaps are called periodontal pockets. When periodontal pockets develop, gums are more likely to bleed, letting harmful bacteria into your bloodstream. These inflammatory bacteria can then negatively affect general health, increasing the risk of or worsening existing health problems.

New York periodontist Dr. Rahmani provides a full range of periodontal procedures to treat periodontal gum pockets. Our state of the art facility equipped with the most advanced periodontal equipment available in USA including latest lasers high precision microscopes.

What Are Periodontal Gum Pockets?

When you visit your dentist for regular checkups you might be aware they gently probe your gums, and you may hear them reading out various measurements to their assistant.

Your gums are probed using a special instrument to see if they bleed at all, as healthy gums should not bleed when probed.

The dental probe is inserted into the small space in between your gum and tooth to measure the overall depth. If you have healthy gums, this depth will be around 3 mm, but any greater could indicate periodontal disease (see: periodontal disease symptoms).

Explaining Periodontal Pockets

You won’t be able to see if your gums have periodontal pockets as they are invisible to the naked eye but they are visible to your dentist who will carefully check them during a dental examination. To do this they will accurately measure the space in between your gums and teeth using what’s called a periodontal probe. This is a slim instrument that is gently inserted in the gap between your teeth and gums, allowing your dentist to measure the depth of this gap in millimeters.

When your gums are probed, it may make unhealthy gums bleed slightly but you shouldn’t feel too much discomfort. These readings provide your dentist with an accurate picture of your gum health.

Healthy gums have a gap of between 1 mm and 3 mm. A gap of between three and 5 mm indicates the very first signs of periodontal disease. If the gap is between five and 7 mm then you have moderate periodontal disease. A gap of 7 to 10 mm or more indicates advanced periodontal disease.

As you can see, even healthy gums have a very slight gap which is called a sulcus and this space can easily collect bacteria and food particles. However, because the space is quite shallow bacteria and food debris can easily be removed by brushing and flossing. Unfortunately, a toothbrush cannot reach any more than two or 3 mm below the gum line and when periodontal pockets are deeper than bacteria and food debris can gradually build up increasing the inflammation and swelling in your gums as the infection worsens.

When this space does become infected then you may well hear your dentist saying you have periodontal pockets and without treatment the bacteria will continue to thrive and multiply, causing more bone loss around your teeth while destroying the ligaments holding your teeth in place.

Periodontal Disease Creates Inflammation

Periodontal disease is a bacterial infection that creates inflammation in the gum tissue.

One effect is to cause the gum tissue to pull away from your teeth. You might notice this occurring and that your teeth begin to look longer than before as the gums recede.

The problem with receding gums is that it causes periodontal pockets or gum pockets to develop because the gum tissue will gradually become looser and less tightly fitting around your teeth. Unfortunately gum pockets are the perfect home for the bacteria that caused the infection in the first place, enabling them to multiply and thrive and resulting in even more destruction.

As the pockets become deeper they begin to affect not only the gum tissue, but also the ligaments which are attached to your teeth and to the tooth sockets. Eventually the infection can destroy these ligaments, causing a loss of attachment between your tooth and the socket. By this stage you might begin to notice your teeth feel a little bit loose.

At the same time the infection will be eating away at the bone around your teeth, and by this stage it may be too late to save the infected teeth.

Gum Pockets Treatment

If you do have periodontal pockets then you will need a proper evaluation by a periodontist who is a dental specialist in treating gum disease. Periodontists will assess the readings taken using a periodontal probe and they also consider other factors such as bleeding while probing. Dental x-rays help determine the extent of any bone loss around your teeth. This information allows them to prescribe the most suitable treatment.

This is why we take the presence of periodontal pockets so seriously, and will recommend immediate action to try to reduce the pockets and to clear up the bacterial infection around your teeth, hopefully before the disease has become too destructive.

The use of nonsurgical treatments such as scaling and root planing (see: treating periodontal disease) and laser therapy (see: laser gum treatment in NYC) can help reduce these periodontal pockets, removing the infection and helping the gums to heal.

Professional Dental Cleaning

For periodontal pockets of around 4 to 5 mm, a professional cleaning may be all that’s required along with improved oral hygiene at home. It’s likely your hygienist will talk to you about how best to clean your teeth and you may need to use an antimicrobial oral rinse to help eliminate disease-causing bacteria.

Scaling and Root Planing

More severe symptoms of periodontal disease are often treated using a procedure called scaling and planing which is an enhanced professional dental cleaning. As well as cleaning your teeth, any exposed tooth root surfaces are cleaned, before these surfaces are smooth or planed which makes it harder for bacteria to adhere.

Smoothing the services also enables the gum tissues to reattach to teeth more easily, resulting in the periodontal pockets becoming smaller and as they shrink they will gradually fit more tightly around the teeth. Where periodontal pockets are quite deep and there is significant bacterial infection, topical antibiotics may be placed directly into the pockets to help improve gum health.

After the infection has been removed from the periodontal pockets, your gums will be able to fight the infection more effectively, and the periodontal pockets will become less deep.

You may notice your teeth still look longer than before, even after treatment has controlled the infection. This is because the infection may well have destroyed some of your gum tissue. In this case we may recommend more extensive treatments to help rebuild lost tissues.

Advanced surgical treatments of Periodontal Gum Pockets:

Deeper pockets may require surgical treatments which can be provided by your periodontist. These treatments can remove any badly damaged tissues, leaving healthy tissues intact which helps aid healing. They can also provide highly specialized treatments such as gum and bone grafting to help restore tissues that have been completely destroyed. This can help stabilize teeth and may prevent their loss as well as improving aesthetics.

• Gum grafting
• Gum recontouring
• Osseous surgery

Surgical treatments of Gum Pockets can help new ligament attachment fibers to develop, and gum grafts can repair some of the damage to the gums through building up the gum tissue in areas where it is deficient.

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Do you have questions about Gum Pockets Treatment in NYC? Would like to schedule an appointment with the best rated periodontist and dentistry specialist, Dr. Rahmani of Manhattan Periodontics Implant Surgery, please contact our office in Midtown NYC for Gum Pockets treatment consultation.