Wellness Dentistry by Dr. Dana Rockey DMD

My passion and focus is on health and wellness - helping patients to achieve and maintain health, rather than simply reacting/responding to disease. That focus is combined with an oral-systemic discipline to patient care.

Blog By:
danarockey

Question from Sanam: What’s your opinion on probing after scaling (Does it really affect the readings or does it not matter)? Also how important is it to have xrays before scaling in order to see subginigival calculus even more clearly? Thank you. : )

Answer from Dana: Hello Sanam. Thank you for your questions:

1. I believe that medico-legally you should do the probings before you scale. The whole point is to gather as much diagnostic information (probing depths, radiographs, health history, charting existing restorations, etc) to help you be able to make an accurate diagnosis of the patients periodontal condition. Once a diagnosis of periodontal disease is made, then usually a treatment plan of what I call initial therapy (scaling and root planing) is made and performed. So, first you have to make the diagnosis then do the scalings, even though it may be very obvious visually that there is calculus present. I think a couple of times in my 35 years of dentistry we rushed and did the scalings before we probed by mistake. In that case, I think the measurements are probably pretty close (within a millimeter) pre and post op.
Send your questions to Team @ DanaRockey (dot) com