The American Veterinary Dental College recommends adult dogs and cats receive a thorough dental cleaning under general anesthesia every year. Anesthesia allows your pet’s health care team to find and address periodontal pockets, thus preserving the health of teeth that might otherwise be lost to disease. While your pet is asleep, your veterinary team also looks for and charts conditions such as gum recession, exposed pulp, fractures, abscesses and bone loss. While veterinary nurses go through extensive training to identify and treat these conditions, the sharpest eyes can only see about three eighths of each individual tooth. It is now becoming the minimum standard of care to add intra-oral radiographs, or dental x-rays, to routine cleanings to allow practitioners to fully assess bone, roots and internal dental anatomy, as well as adjacent structures such as sinuses, nasal cavities and nerves.