A dental x-ray provides a thorough and complete picture of your what is going on in your mouth and the overall state of your oral health. It depicts hard tissues like teeth and bones and the soft tissue surrounding your teeth and jawbones. For this, x-rays need to be considered an important part of your regular dental care.

Thanks to dental x-rays caries can be detected effectively, together with bone diseases, periodontal or gum disease, gum infections and even some types of tumors. Early detection of these conditions will allow oral specialists to prevent diseases before they become serious health issues.

Sometimes, people have concerns regarding the safety of dental radiographs, due to the use of and exposure to radiation. In fact, the amount of radiation used in x-rays is extremely small. For example, 2 to 4 images of a full back mouth may expose the patient to 0.005 millisieverts of radiation—the unit of measure for radiation. People in the United States are, on average, exposed to 3.2 millisieverts every year. For added safety, oral practitioners follow limiting guiding principles to reduce radiation exposure to patients as much as possible.

Dr. Birnbaum recommends to full mouth x-rays series every 5 years and bite wings every year as a prevention method supplementing your oral examination and check-ups.

Contact Dr. Birnbaum today at (617) 965-1400 or book your appointment for your professional dental x-rays today.