What happens if you miss a dentist appointment

In addition to regular cleanings, your dentist performs important preventative care and checkups that protect your health in the long run. Your dentist takes X-rays of your teeth to look for structural deficiencies, conducts checks of your gums and tongue for indicators of disease, and examines the state of your enamel for wear and vulnerabilities.

At minimum, to maintain your dental health, you should visit your dentist twice annually for cleanings, and receive X-rays once per year. If you experience dental problems like cavities or tooth pain you may need to see your dentist more often.

Your dentist will remind you before your next appointment to make it easy for you to remember. But developing a habit — or rather, falling out of the habit — of missing dentist appointments can lead to a increased risk for cavities and gum disease.

During your appointment, your dentist can examine your teeth for any bacterial buildup and recommend preventive care to strengthen your teeth against future damage. Preventive care will always save you time and money. The sooner you make your appointment, the sooner you can begin to repair the damage that bacteria have caused. Your dentist will remove the bacteria from your tooth and fill the hole left behind with a biocompatible material. The filling, in addition to being an esthetic restoration for your tooth, fortifies the structural integrity of your tooth, which can be compromised by tooth decay.

What can happen when you skip out on a tooth filling now? The truth? Limited appointment availability and finishing their appointment on-time. Another Top Complaint When this happens, our office calls other patients who need dental treatment to fill these newly empty slots. Other patients arrive after their reserved appointment time or miss their appointments entirely. We do our best, but it is not fair to inconvenience punctual patients in an effort to see those that arrive late.

What usually happens is that our staff misses lunch or are late arriving home to take care of their families, which we also try to avoid at all costs. And it pains us to do this because staff depend on working during reserved appointment times in order to feed their families.

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