Dental health care for animals presents a range of challenges for the veterinary surgeon. Even for a simple procedure like a scale, clean and polish pets won’t sit calmly and allow us to fossick around in their mouths. Which means most animal dental care must be carried out under a general anaesthetic.

Another challenge is that inside the mouth of any dog or cat resides a veritable multitude of bacteria, some of it extremely virulent. Even with all the anti-viral and -bacterial filters we deploy in our main operating theatre the risk that oral bacteria from dental treatment could subsequently infect another animal who may be undergoing major surgery is simply too great to contemplate.

Our solution was to add a custom-built dental surgery/theatre isolated from our primary surgical suite and the rest of the hospital to contain the possibility of infection or cross-contamination.

The Dentistry Suite is smaller but contains very similar technology to our main Surgical Suite. It’s equipped with its own dedicated anaesthesia and monitoring equipment, and utilises similar HEPA and bacterial filters. Apart from that, and the specialised dental x-ray equipment we use in the Radiology Suite, our dental tools are very similar to those you see whenever you visit your own dentist — drills, cleaning and extraction tools.

The majority of our dental work is still preventative scaling, cleaning and polishing. That’s the way we like it because it means all of our patients have healthy teeth and gums … and fresh breath.

Unfortunately vets are seeing all too many pets with more serious issues — severe dental plaque, tartar build-up, and gingivitis. When oral health problems reach this stage they require major intervention to prevent damage to the animal’s heart and kidneys. This is when oral health care for your pet can get expensive. It’s little different to your own teeth and gums. Neglect them long enough and, eventually, you’re going to be looking at serious — and costly — remedial work. Or, dentures or implants.

And yet, so many of these problems can be eliminated or at least dramatically reduced by a simple, regular veterinary dental check and an inexpensive tooth clean.