Patient asked me today is scaling can weaken the tooth?? This question may be wear for patients with an oral hygiene knowledge,but in fact many patients ask this questions.
The answer is no big no, periodic tooth scaling is one of the most important methods to keep good oral hygiene and keep gums and teeth disease free. In general you should make tooth scaling and polishing 2 times yearly at minimum as many patients tend to form calculus in a very high rate. Those patients may need to make tooth scaling and polishing in shorter periods.
Tartar or calculus is formed mainly of minerals from the saliva and BACTERIA in a very high ratio. Calculus simply act as a house for bacteria simply rough, protected and hard house for the bacteria to prevent cleaning or washing by brush or saliva.
Also the growth of calculus make the bacteria attack the gums and produce many periodontal diseases and gum diseases that can be really serious that can really cause tooth extraction.
Also calculus have a very dark color and also it is very rough and porous and can attract food stains like a sponge.
last thing you swallow bacteria from calculus with your food which can cause many systemic diseases.
so it is very useful to remove tartar and polish your teeth to make it hard for it to adhese to the tooth again.
so why patients ask this quistion??
i think that there is two main reasons the first is that if the patient has many pockets and gum recession and bone destruction around tooth the calculus act like a wall that fix all the teeth together and reduce its movement so when the patient remove calculus the teeth become more mobile so the patient feel bad. But this looseness is temporarily and after a while the gums will start to heal and the tooth can become more fixed again also if we leave the calculus the end result will be complete looseness and the tooth will simply fall alone.
also the patient sometimes become annoyed by the large hard pieces of calculus we remove and feel that it may be part of tooth structure. I say no wakeup it is not your teeth we breaking it is a harmfully dirty dirty material that is full of bacteria and can make you loose your teeth.
