Featuring Dr. Dino Georgas, BSc, DMD, MSD, Cert. Perio, FCDS(BC)

Duration: 1 minute, 18 seconds

Well, smoking can affect the mouth in many ways.

Firstly, it can help promote the progression of periodontal disease. Secondarily, it can affect the way a patient would heal from surgery, whether it's a bone graft or a gum graft, or if we're doing some treatment that's aesthetic or cosmetic.

Lastly, smoking can contribute to failure long term of treatment we provided. That could include failure around a cosmetic procedure. It can deteriorate the levels of the bone around the teeth, as well as implants, and it can cause relapse, a recession of the gums.

So overall, a patient will do much better if they don't smoke. If they do smoke, it's advised that the patients minimize the amount of smoking that they do, so that there's less of a risk for them over the long term.

And for the benefit of our younger patients, we do know that the effects of smoking are cumulative. The longer you smoke, there's more chance over your lifetime that damage will occur. The best option is to minimize your smoking, or please just don't start smoking at all.

If you have any questions about the effects of smoking, and how this may have affected your periodontal health, the best source would be to speak to your dentist and let them do an examination.

Presenter: Dr. Dino Georgas, Periodontist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Periodontist