Seattle Dental Care. Because we do care.

Hello everyone. It’s Annika, Rick’s hygienist. I wanted a turn at posting in our blog so here you go!

I didn’t use to floss. I was, like many others, satisfied with the clean feeling I got after brushing my teeth. When I would go for my 6 month cleaning and checkup, the hygienist would tell me to floss every day and I would think: “If I eat ribs or corn, sure lady! But every day? I don’t need to do that.” So I would merrily go my way and not give flossing a second thought unless I felt that I had food between my teeth.

One important tool we use in our office is intra-oral photography.  As one of our patients you may have experienced this on your first visit with us or at an exam appointment when something has changed in your mouth like a broken filling.  Or you may have just noticed our camera on the operatory counter.  Being able to take dental images provides so many benefits to our wonderful patients.

These detailed photographs show our patients the oral conditions that we can see when we are looking in their mouth.  Our patients have a better understanding regarding their teeth when they can see what we are seeing.  This becomes a great teaching aid for us when explaining what can be done to improve your overall smile and dental health.  Also being able to store these images for future reference allows us to follow the progression of a current problem or recognize when there have been changes. Patients can then see these progressions visually with us and can be involved in planning any care.

I have worked as a hygienist in several offices over the last 16 years, most of them were traditional practice offices. I am so happy to have found my place here with Rick! I have learned so much from him and I love the tools he provides for me so I can do my best work. I’m sure that you all can relate to the feeling of satisfaction of a job well done, and I get to enjoy that feeling here all the time.

I currently work at a traditional office one day a week and I am able to see side by side the results of traditional periodontal disease treatment versus our treatment which includes laser and ozone. Each time I follow up with a traditionally treated periodontal case I can’t help but notice that I get much better results here, where we use laser and ozone.

You may have heard over recent years about the growing concern regarding antibacterial soaps. While hand washing is one of the most effective ways to protect you and your family from getting sick, the soap you use may not have been the best choice.  If you walk up and down the soap aisle at your local store you will find many different ones to choose from.  There are at least 2,000 different products that have been previously labeled with the special “antibacterial” chemical.  The FDA had stated that antibacterial soaps are not any more effective than using plain soap. They even went as far as stating that the makers of the antibacterial soaps had not proven them to be safe.