Some people may has the same suffering as me. Sometimes I feel my diastema is wide enough to pack with even a coin, which has a serious impact on my appearance.

Generally, the gap between teeth is filled up with gum tissues(gum papilla). Under pathological condition, the gum height gradually depresses, tissue inflammation occurs, and diastema becomes wider and wider.

Why does diastema become bigger and bigger?

Various reasons leads to bigger and bigger diastema. In general, reasons include congenital factors and acquired behaviors. For example, patient’s using toothpicks might result in gum damage, cavities and bad restorations, etc. But distemas are mainly caused by dental diseases among which periodontitis is one of the commonest types.

Peridontitis is a disease which is easily ignored by humans. It like a bomb in your mouth and may break out occasionally and silently with serious consequences.

In China, 85% of people over 35 has periodontal diseases. On average, people over 65 has 11 missing teeth caused by periodontitis, and 6.8% of people has absence of all teeth also caused by periodontitis. In 1986, in order to find out the reasons of teeth extraction, stomatology scholars made a deep research. They researched in total 10,000 extracted teeth and acquired that the rate of dental extraction caused by periodontitis reach up to 44%.

Microbes in dental plaque is the initial factor of chronic periodontitis. It would proceed a serious damages in oral cavity, causing gum tissue inflammation and bleeding. If it is out of control, it will lead to the withdraw of gums and alveolar bones and the space between tooth and tooth which should have been occupied by gum tissues and alveolar bones exposed. At this time, people can discover diastema become wider and wider. Worse still, when tooth loss its supporting soil, it will become loose, out of control and shifting around.

The most troublesome point is periodontitis isn’t able to be cured but only controlled. In general, treatment includes three stages: cleaning, operating and maintaining.

Deep Cleaning. Clear such local irritants as calculus dentalis and dental plaques away.

Operation to remove periodontal pocket. Shallow periodontal pocket can be excised and deep periodontal pocket can be treated by scaling, excisional new attachment of periodontum(ENAP), etc. Maintaining. Beyond the regular cleaning, regular re-treatments are needed to keep us informed of the latest oral situation.