How Often Should you get Dental X-rays?

Dental X-rays can feel like a bit of a pain. For one thing, it’s an oral hygiene requirement that you cannot replicate at home.

You can easily skip your bi-annual cleaning if you aren’t experiencing any discomfort and you are confident in your oral hygiene routine. You can’t as easily dismiss an X-ray unless you have a very unusually equipped home.

Are dental X-rays really important for healthy people? Are they enough of a reason to keep up with your annual or twice-annual dental appointments?

The answer to that, simply enough, is yes. However, the frequency and importance of dental X-rays will vary based on both your personal makeup and the stage of life that you are currently in.

In this article, we take a look at the importance of dental X-rays and what role they should play in your life.

Frequency Overview

The average range for how often you should get X-rays is between 18 and 36 months. Obviously, that’s a pretty big gap, and it counts for a wide range of human experiences.

If you have struggled with tooth pain or other issues in the past, you’ll probably be on the more frequent end of that spectrum. Same goes for children whose mouth makeup changes pretty frequently.

On the other hand, if you aren’t having any issues, you can very easily go three years or more without needing dental X-rays. What most people find is that they can go through fairly long stretches of time without having any oral hygiene issues at all, only to eventually reach a stage in life where the situation becomes a little more complicated.

That’s a natural consequence of aging. Teeth, like so many other parts of our body, simply require a bit more attention as we get older. X-rays don’t always need to catch a problem to do their job the right way. They fall, for most of us, into the category of preventative care.

You don’t want the X-ray to identify anything, but if it does, you’ll be glad you got it.

When to prioritize getting an X-ray

The most natural reason to get an X-ray beyond in regularly scheduled intervals is because you’re experiencing some form of discomfort. Unfortunately, that’s also the most dysfunctional version of routine care.

We, of course, all live busy lives and don’t necessarily want to go to the dentist only to spend 20 minutes having our teeth scraped and then, what, 15 seconds with the dentist themselves? It feels like we’re going to a lot of trouble for something that we could more or less achieve at home.

Clean teeth. We do that every morning and every night. So why take time off from work to have someone else do it?

But it goes back to what we said in the introduction. When you catch a dental problem earlier, rather than once it’s developed into something that’s causing you pain, you not only eliminate potential discomfort, but you also save yourself considerable money.

Haven’t we all ignored a sound in our car, hoping it would go away on its own, only to later be hit with a much bigger car bill than we would have been had we not repaired the problem early? Well, your teeth can be similar. When you catch issues in their early stages of development, the solutions are generally simpler than they would be if you wait until things get bad.

X-rays, when done routinely, can play an important role in ensuring that you are participating in preventive dental care.

Oral hygiene done the right way

Here’s the bottom line. Going in to get your X-rays done routinely isn’t fun, but it is an important part of routine dental care.

The best way to participate in this system is through your dentist’s guidance. Not only should you be going in for regular X-rays, but you should be visiting your dentist twice annually.

Get your teeth cleaned. Make uncomfortable conversation with the hygienist while they stick their fingers in your mouth. Most importantly, allow your dentist to help you develop an oral hygiene routine that reflects your unique needs.

At Integrated Dental, we specialize in customized care that fits your exact needs. Book an appointment today.