Why Do You Need Dental X-Rays

If you consistently schedule an annual dental checkup for routine teeth cleaning, you may wonder why your dentist requests an x-ray from time to time. The reality is that an x-ray can serve a variety of purposes for dental professionals. Here are a few things that dental x-rays allow your dentist to achieve without much hassle.

Spot Premature Tooth Decay

Oftentimes, tooth decay is difficult to spot even by seasoned dentists since the action is happening behind the scenes. An x-ray will make tooth decay stand out clearly and allow dentists to plan a course of action to rectify the problem. If you detect tooth decay in time, you can significantly minimize the fallout.

Find Out About Developing Bone Loss

While periodontal disease is easy to spot, the bone loss associated with it can be harder to quantify without an x-ray. A few simple x-rays allow dental practitioners to quickly gauge the extent of bone loss and recommend treatment options. One can side-step significant complications of bone loss such as tooth replacement if this condition is detected early on.

Check the Status of Fillings

There’s always the chance that a dental filling may result in complications somewhere down the road. Removing a filling to check for bone decay or infection is impractical. A series of x-rays makes it easy for dentists to monitor the health of a filling over the course of months or even years.

Detect Tooth Root Infections

While a root infection is sometimes apparent due to symptoms like sinus complications, patients and dentists alike often have a hard time identifying the underlying issue. X-rays enable trained dental technicians to see those infections clearly without doing invasive exploratory work. If you do have a root infection, you’ll be glad you caught it early with an x-ray.

Improve the Outcomes of Many Procedures

Whether you need a root canal or a crown, your dental care provider must have as much information as possible about your situation to deliver the best results. X-rays help them to get a read on how things are going at every step of any given operation. A few minutes in the x-ray chair can save everyone a lot of time, pain, and aggravation.

When It Comes to Healthy Teeth, Knowledge Is the Key

Our Plantation dentists and Tamarac dentist would be happy to discuss the importance of x-rays with you. Suffice it to say that x-ray images allow dental experts to spot problems in the making before they become severe. Ultimately, a simple x-ray can eliminate plenty of grief when it comes to good dental health. 

December 27, 2021