Dental Hygienists

With Richmond Fine Dentistry’s dental hygienist, Melbourne has a dental hygienist you can trust for professional and high-quality teeth cleaning.

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Your Dental Hygiene Appointment

All patients coming to our dental clinic for a teeth cleaning appointment will now receive a more in-depth clean. Our practice has acquired an Airflow GBT tool, This Swiss-engineered tool, called Guided Biofilm Therapy, allows our dental hygienist to identify more plaque deposits accurately and remove them using air.

Compared to a traditional tooth clean using manual dental scrapers, the EMS Airflow GBT tool is:

  • quicker, taking about half the time needed for a conventional clean
  • more efficient, identifying more plaque deposits
  • affordable, with no extra cost to patients for the use of this equipment.

Please visit our EMS Airflow Guided Biofilm Therapy (GBT) page to learn more.

Brushing

You should brush your teeth for at least two minutes twice a day. Our dental hygienist recommends this for teeth cleaning, fresh breath and contributes to the prevention of gum disease. Effective brushing technique is vital.

Dental Hygienist Tips on Effective Brushing

Our dental hygienist recommends you select a soft-bristled toothbrush with a small head so you can access hard to reach places including your back teeth. This avoids your tooth enamel being damaged by scrubbing with a hard brush. At Richmond Fine Dentistry we have a selection of toothbrushes for your convenience.

Advice on Interdental Cleaning

Effective teeth cleaning comprises two parts: brushing and interdental cleaning, or cleaning between the teeth. 60% of the clean happens because of brushing: the other 40% of the clean is due to interdental cleaning. Our dental hygienist recommends regular interdental cleaning, especially before bed, as an essential part of your oral care routine. It will remove plaque build-up and food particles between your teeth where the tooth brush can’t access.

When flossing, be careful to avoid injuring your gums.

How to Floss Effectively

  • Using approximately 50cm of floss, wind it loosely around your middle fingers and hold the floss with thumbs and index fingers so you have about 1 cm of floss. Carefully insert the floss between two teeth using a back and forward sawing action. Curve the floss around the side of your tooth to make a curved ‘C’ shape. Slide the floss up and down the side of each tooth. Gently push the floss under the gums as far as it can go whilst the floss is curved around the root of the tooth. Do not force the floss below the gums. Floss until you get a nice squeaky clean feeling.
  • Our dental hygienist says: remember each space has two surfaces to clean!
  • Use a clean length of floss of approximately 7 centimetres for each tooth, repeat the process for all your teeth. Don’t forget to floss the back and sides of your back teeth. Although it can take some time to master, it’s an important part of your daily oral hygiene routine.
  • Children’s teeth also benefit from flossing. You should help your child brush and floss until they are around 8 years old as younger children are not able to do this effectively on their own.
  • Interdental brushes are now a popular and often favoured way of cleaning between the teeth. No more ‘flossers finger’! Tooth paste can be used to enhance cleaning and deliver fluoride and other beneficial agents like Triclosan found in Colgate Total to the interdental tooth surfaces.
  • Come into Richmond Fine Dentistry: we have a full range of interdental brushes. We would be happy to advise you on correct size of brush for you and brush technique.

How Do I Clean Surfaces Where There Are Large Gaps or Teeth Missing?

You can use your floss or even a small toothbrush, but the ‘shoe shine technique’ is ideal.

Shoe Shine Technique

Buy some 2in x 2in (5cm x 5cm) gauze. Pull gauze at corners to create a long thick ‘floss’ and use to polish the surfaces of the teeth facing onto the gaps and the very back surfaces. Toothpaste can be applied to gauze and use in a shoe-shine, back and forth motion, a bit like drying your back with a towel. This is a great tip for partial denture wearers.

Toothbrush Hygiene

Have you ever wondered about the wisdom of brushing your teeth with a dirty, unhygienic toothbrush, that contains millions of bacteria? Some research suggests that toothbrushes are a hidden source of infective material that recontaminate the mouth and causing illness.

And the effects of tooth and gum infection are not confined to the mouth. Links have been established between periodontal disease, stroke and coronary artery disease, and recent studies indicate a connection between gum disease and higher instances of pre-term delivery and low birth-weight babies. The precise nature of these correlation has yet to be determined, but at this stage we can accept that a healthy mouth is a prerequiste for a healthy body.

Contact us today for more information or to book an appointment for your dental hygienist, Melbourne.