Dental care is a complex issue in
veterinary medicine. Perfect dental care
for pets is rare. Complete homecare can
be difficult and more extensive dental care has traditionally always required anesthesia.
We provide non-anesthetic dental procedures and we believe these cleanings are an
invaluable part of a complete dental program.
At our hospital, non-anesthetic dental cleanings are performed by technicians
from Animal Dental Care. They are a company of highly trained veterinary dental
technicians that come to our practice.
The
non-anesthetic dental (NAD)
is an oral assessment and charting, teeth cleaning and polishing done with gentle
restraint. The NAD should be used only
with patients that have minimal, early (stage 1) dental disease who are easy to handle. Because the patient is not asleep, it is not
possible to mirror all that can be done in an
anesthetic dental procedure. Deeper disease may be missed in non anesthetic
procedures. Behavior issues and patient
compliance can interfere. Dental
radiographs, extractions, and some level of assessment simply is not possible
awake.
The NAD and the anesthetic dental
should be considered as two distinct procedures. You and your veterinarian need to determine, often
along with the trained dental technician, if a NAD is appropriate. As noted, we have to consider how much dental
disease is present and your pet’s temperament. During preventive cleanings, Animal Dental Care
technicians also may find disease that requires further care under anesthesia.
“Dental” procedures are also often
done at pet shops and groomers without anesthesia and without the supervision
of a veterinarian. This easily may lead
to pets with too high a degree of dental disease receiving incomplete and inappropriate
dental care. There is no benefit to
simple removal of the tartar if deeper issues are present.
Non-anesthetic dentistry is a
controversial topic in veterinary medicine. There are those that believe dental procedures
should never be performed without anesthesia. They believe that it is not possible to
accomplish significant dental cleaning and assessment awake. We disagree with this. The technicians with
Animal Dental Care have
demonstrated over many years and hundreds of patients that they can effectively
treat early dental disease. As long as
we select the right patients, good can be done with the NAD. The best times for us to recommend a
non-anesthetic procedure are early in life when there is minimal tartar and in
between
anesthetic dental cleanings when the tartar build up is low.
We believe providing non-anesthetic
dentistry for the right patients in the right circumstances is the best dental
care for our patients. Feel free ask us
for more information.
Timothy R Kraabel, DVM, DABVP (Canine/Feline Practice)
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