 Hello everybody. Andrea Mayesca here with dental tutoring. In the video today I want to talk to you guys about soft deposits because I still find students tend to get them confused. So we're going to talk about the difference between plaque and charter and what exactly happens. Because even when you start to work patients will ask you things that you may think is obvious, but they will ask you things like so what is plaque exactly. And you don't want to go it's the white stuff on your teeth you know how else do you explain that right so I will be going in depth a little bit more for you so I'm just going to share my screen here. If you're a member inside the dental hygiene or the dental assisting courses so if you are a dental member this is what the PowerPoint looks like. And I'll just quickly show you inside one of the courses so depending on the course that you are in this membership login area may look a little bit different to you. But it is under the disease prevention one right here so you just have to click that and then it's labeled soft deposits here. Okay, so I just wanted to show you guys that but if you're not a member, feel free to sign up to get sort of the whole PowerPoint and to get a lot more because I'm just going to go through a little bit of it today. Okay, so plaque first and foremost, those are your soft deposits, even as you are cleaning teeth, sometimes plaque can be quite thin and sometimes plaque can be thicker. So you might mistake thicker plaque as being hard, but it's not okay to keep it simple plaque always forms first okay first you have your pellicle after you eat drink anything like that literally starts to form within a second. But then plaque comes after that so if you're not brushing twice a day. If you're not flossing every day that plaque becomes thicker and thicker and thicker and what I tell our patients is I do tell them that you know you want to limit that plaque as much as possible so that is why we always say to brush at least twice a day and to use the floss every day because if you're not that plaque then becomes hard and the hard tartar you cannot take off with your instrument so that's what I say. So to get more in depth so plaque is a dense non mineralized mass of bacteria pretty much in a inter microbial matrix so tell your patients that plaque harbors bacteria. So when they're not brushing twice a day when they're not using the floss that is bacteria sitting there okay if you had bacteria on your arm or if you decided to not wash your hands all day it's the same thing that bacteria just sits there and you don't want that so you can have plaque above the gum line and underneath the gum line as well. So even if a patient has pockets of maybe a one or two that is still having that plaque underneath in that area okay so just something to keep in mind. So yeah so I do talk about the pellicle which I did mention a little bit so a lot of patients will say well I brush you know I do everything that I'm supposed to do so should I then not have plaque ever. So let them know that there's a pellicle that forms right away so if we eat drink anything it just sort of happens within a second. So there's no bacteria in that but it makes it a lot easier for plaque to attach onto the teeth so technically the plaque isn't attaching to our enamel but it's attaching to the pellicle on the enamel. So if you want to talk about that with your patients if they're still like okay wait a minute so if I floss every day if I brush twice a day why do I have plaque you know then I like to mention the pellicle and then they go oh okay. So if you have saliva it's just easier for that pellicle to form but at the same time your pellicle helps to protect the teeth also against eating and drinking because we tend to eat and drink things that are quite acidic right. So it does help to protect but it can harm too. So it does help to protect in protecting our enamel against the harsh you know environments that we tend to eat and drink and expose the mouth to. But then it does it does harm us because it allows plaque to attach plaque is what harbors bacteria if plaque stays there it turns into tartar so it's kind of like a good thing and a bad thing. So then stage two so this is where things start to grow you know per se and this is when the bacteria happens so anytime we are eating something so think specifically grand positive bacteria. So that is stage two so this is still talking about your pellicle so as soon as the pellicle starts to form stage one pretty much there's no bacteria but then stage two it it's you know thicker and then it does have bacteria grand positive to be specific and then stage three it gets thicker and thicker and that is when plaque starts to form so I made it a little bit easier here. Something to memorize for the board exam all of the members have this but feel free to stop the video if you would like to look a little bit further. Sub gingival so yes it can go underneath the gum line as soon as that happens it tends to be more grand negative so something else to look at there's still a mix of grand positive in there but as soon as it goes to be grand or sorry underneath the and it's more grand negative now if the plaque stays on there depends on the textbook you read it could be 24 hours it could be 12 hours it could be 72 hours that forms calculus forms charter and then plaque forms on top of calculus and then there's more calculus it's just a big mess right. So I tell patients that calculus calculus you cannot take off with your toothbrush so no matter how hard you try if it gets to that point. You need to come to the dentist to see us to actually take it off because if it stays there. That's a lot of bacteria and then the plaque forms on top of that and then more bacteria yucky right so it's just not a nice thing. And I made a note here that if a patient's using an anti tartar toothpaste so they do help because they have higher levels. I have that right here of pirated pyrophosphate so usually in the toothpaste it says some type of pyrophosphate that just helps they say. To I guess break down the tartar a little bit more or or it helps to prevent it from forming in the first place but the thing about those toothpaste is that a lot of patients tend to be allergic to them. That's what they're starting to find. So their gums actually get more red because they might actually be having a reaction to the toothpaste. So yes they might be having less tartar but then they come to see you and their gums are red and you're thinking okay why are the gums red when the plaque and tartar is actually minimal. So that could be happening. So I tend to only suggest that type of toothpaste to somebody who's like they need to come in every three months they have a lot of plaque a lot of tartar then that might help with that. So just something to make note of that those anti-calculus toothpaste do have the pyrophosphate in them okay. So calculus can form of course above the gum line and then underneath as well. Read over this if you like but those are just kind of the main points. So calculus attachment so it does attach onto plaque of course okay and it can attach anywhere. So I have seen tartar on the occlusal surfaces where you might not think there's plaque there but there is even just a little bit. So it does like to attach to anything and I'll let you guys read this over if you like. Once again if you are a member you have all of this but it just sort of goes more in depth of the pellicle of plaque how it starts how it continues how it gets thicker. And then I do talk about if a patient's just having such a hard time with their oral health then we might have to take it a step further and suggest other things such as antibiotics to go underneath the gum line. So I will let you guys read through that if you like. So there's tons of things in this unit here. I made them as simple as possible to kind of read through because you do have all of this in your textbook. But I have 16 slides here whereas in the textbook it was probably two chapters and you don't need to know all of that for the board exam. But at the same time if you've been looking at those two chapters like two or three depending on the textbook you read. You might need this to sort of bring it all into play you know because it's one thing to read those chapters and then to go OK I don't even know what I just read. You know read this first to get an idea and then feel free to go back to the to the chapters to kind of read that that over and then you will probably say oh now it's starting to make more sense. So I hope this helped you know plaque, tartar, what happens and to just make it easier to explain to your patients as well. So if you guys need anything let me know and thank you so much for watching. I am uploading videos at least twice a week now so if you guys need to need me to talk about anything in particular if you need help with something let me know. And thank you guys so much for watching. I will see you in the next one.