Since I began practicing orthodontics in 1987, my patients have struggled with Oral Hygiene (OH).  In analyzing the situation, I found two glaring problems with the way we were operating: 

1.     First, my staff and I were not giving patients a consistent message       regarding what is good and bad oral hygiene;
   

2.     Second, because the visuals we were using at the time only showed atrocious hygiene, the patients figured that if they didn’t look like that, they were probably doing OK. 
   

    Once I understood the problem, I began rethinking the way we teach and evaluate oral hygiene and developed tools to not only help us provide a consistent message, but to make that message easy for patients to understand and address this important issue while still easily remedied.

     I decided that I wanted to address oral hygiene when we first see the beginning of inflammation.  That’s it.  At that point, it is relatively easy to correct the problem and move back toward pristine OH.  If left unchecked at that point, the patient will likely move toward gingival hypertrophy and increased difficulty correcting the problem without more involved intervention.

     I then standardized the grading scale and taught my entire staff the new grading criteria, which eliminated the inconsistency.  We’ve since extended the same concepts to our referring offices (the hygienists love this) and have turned it into a marketing point for our office.  Click the links below to see the details: