Our Dental Hygienists

Your teeth are not the only important part of your mouth. Your gums are essential to oral hygiene as well. We can provide periodontal cleanings and treatment. Oral health is especially important when considering cosmetic dentistry procedures such as dental crowns and porcelain veneers in Los Altos.

For long-term maintenance and periodontal (gum) care, our team of outstanding and gentle dental hygienists is trained in traditional methods as well as the latest non-surgical and laser assisted periodontal therapy (LAPT) techniques.

What is Laser Bacterial Reduction (LBR)?

We are constantly learning and striving to advance the standard of patient care in our office. As such, we have recently added a new procedure to your professional teeth cleaning to help fight periodontal (gum) disease.

Periodontal disease affects approximately 80% of adults and is a growing epidemic in our society. Understanding of this disease has increased greatly over the last few years, and we now know that periodontal disease is a bacterial infection in the gum tissues around teeth. We now not only treat periodontal/gum disease with removal of mechanical irritants and diseased tissue (your normal cleanings) but are also addressing the underlying infection that causes it. With that thought in mind, we recommend that all of our patients have their teeth & gums decontaminated with a diode laser during their cleaning appointments for three major reasons.
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1. To reduce or eliminate bacteremia. During the professional teeth cleaning process most patients will have some areas that may bleed. This allows bacteria (pathogens) that are present in all of our mouths to flood into the bloodstream and sometimes settle in weakened areas of our body such as a damaged heart valve or artificial knee, hip, etc. We typically pre-medicate those patients that we know have a heart condition or artificial joints with antibiotics so that these bacteria cannot cause harm to these areas. Latest research shows that these oral pathogens have now been linked to a number of other diseases such as cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, low birth weight babies, and diabetes. Needless to say, anything that we can do to reduce or eliminate bacteremia is positive for all our patients.
2. To prevent cross contamination of infections in one area of your mouth to other areas. Decontamination minimizes the chance that we may inadvertently pick up bacterial infection in one area of our mouth and move it to another.
3. To kill periodontal disease bacteria and stop the infection before they cause physical destruction or loss of bony support around your teeth.

The laser decontamination process is painless and normally takes about 5-10 minutes. We highly recommend that you take advantage of this service as part of your teeth cleaning. Laser decontamination, when combined with the cleaning, is an additional $37. Unfortunately this treatment is not covered by most insurance plans. Insurance companies and the coverage they provide are almost always behind the leading edge in state-of-the-art health care.

What is Laser Assisted Periodontal Therapy?

Most healthy people have pockets around their teeth that measure 3mm or less, which they are able to maintain with proper home care. However, once these pockets become 4mm or deeper, it becomes extremely difficult to clean and maintain them. As a result, colonies of bacteria thrive at the base of these pockets causing chronic gum inflammation and infection. Laser periodontal therapy is a specialized, conservative, and non-surgical procedure for treating periodontal disease.

During this treatment, your teeth will undergo the process known as scaling and root planning to remove the tartar and periodontal bacteria. We then utilize the dental soft tissue laser to selectively remove any diseased or infected tissues around the teeth. This treatment will help shrink the periodontal pockets, in addition to removing infected and diseased tissues and seal blood vessels and nerve endings.