A Salivary Stone Can Be Frightening: What is it? - AMM Dental Mill Park.

AMM Dental Clinic Mill Park offers dental services for you and for your Family. We are Dentist serving communities in Mill Park, Bundoora, Epping, South Morang, Lalor & Thomas Town.

Your smile is can be one of your greatest assets. It makes you feel confident. It boosts your self-esteem. And it all begins with having a perfect set of teeth and healthy gums. If you don’t feel confident in showing off your pearly whites, then it’s high time that you visit our clinic!

At AMM Dental Clinic – Mill Park, we offer the best oral health care services and treatment to restore your once dazzling smile back to its glore.

Without wanting to put too fine a point on it, whichever way you want to put it, salivary stones are disgusting. The word salivary is; any body part with stone added to it is; and even its medical term, “sialolithiasis” is.

How you’re meant to say that if you have one is anyone’s guess.

Don’t read this while you’re eating. Or if you ever want to eat again.

If you haven’t already guessed, salivary stones are stones that form in blocked salivary ducts. They’re concrements of calcium and other minerals naturally found in saliva, which block, build and harden beneath the surface of the tongue.

Should you be curious enough and gross enough to look at one under a microscope, you’d see a mineralised nucleus, laminated in layers of organic and inorganic substances.

Organic substances in stones we get; but inorganic? Like what? Steel wheels? A voodoo lounge? Tumbling dice?

It’s a lot less exciting than that: hydroxyapatite, carbonate apatite, whitlockite and brushite. All related to calcium it seems; but when most of us are only modest science buffs, Google exists to fill all the holes. Sometimes with goop, so you’ve gotta watch that.

Back to unblocking the mystery of blocked ducts and what is created. These rocks can cause pain and swelling, especially when saliva flow is stimulated. A few years ago, the gross removal of a sublingual one (under the tongue) after about five days of pain was YouTube-viralled.

It was frightening few centimetres in length, and left a noticeable hole.

More frighteningly still, it could happen to any of us. Sometimes too, the entire side of your face can swell.

Salivary stones are often extremely irritating for several days. Whenever food is eaten, saliva becomes trapped in the gland causing it to swell, accompanied by pain and discomfort. It’s not always easy to see what’s going on, even when the site of the issue can be identified.

 

However it’s not always obvious or painful. It’s not uncommon for people to not be aware of anything at all, until it starts to displace their tongue. For some patients, they arrive at the dentist not because their mouth hurts, but because their dentures don’t fit properly.

How incredibly disconcerting that would be… thinking your jaw had changed almost overnight.

Most commonly, these stones occur in the Wharton duct: the submandibular excretory duct. It drains saliva from the three pairs of salivary glands: the parotid (below each ear), the submandibular (along the lower jaw), and the sublingual. It’s about 5cm long (hence the freaky length of the viral video) and it is via this duct (see what I did there?) saliva drains to the sublingual caruncle, which is at the base of the underside of the tongue.

Salivary gland stones are calcifications in the salivary gland or in the tubes (ducts) that drain the salivary glands. They create a blockage that obstructs the flow of saliva. Salivary gland stones are the most common cause of inflammatory salivary gland disease.

What Is Salivary Gland Stone?

Salivary gland stones are calcifications in the salivary gland or in the tubes (ducts) that drain the salivary glands. They create a blockage that obstructs the flow of saliva. Salivary gland stones are the most common cause of inflammatory salivary gland disease.

Three out of four salivary stones occur in the submandibular gland. In rare cases, stones can occur in more than one gland. Although uncommon, people can also get recurring stones.

Alternative Names:

Sialolithiasis

Causes of Salivary Gland Stones

The underlying cause of salivary gland stones is unknown. No foods or drinks have been shown to cause salivary gland stones. The only known risk factors are dry mouth and dehydration. Therefore, staying well-hydrated is the only preventative measure to date.

Symptoms of Salivary Gland Stones

Symptoms may include any of the following:

• Swelling
• Pain and discomfort
• Infection

Exams and Tests for Salivary Gland Stones

Your doctor will perform a physical exam and may order ultrasounds, CT scans, or MRI scans to help guide treatment. Sialendoscopy may also be used to assess the stone(s).

Stones are categorized by the size of their diameter:

• Small: 4 millimeters or smaller
• Medium: 5-6 millimeters
• Large: 6 millimeters or larger

Treatment of Salivary Gland Stones

Sometimes an infection can lead to swelling that pushes a small stone out on its own. Stones can also break into multiple smaller stones that may come out on their own.

However, treatment is usually needed to remove stones or fragments. People with salivary gland stones should never attempt to break or remove stones on their own as it may cause damage or scarring.

Minimally-invasive procedures

At Amm, minimally-invasive procedures are the most common form of treatment used to address salivary gland stones. Unlike traditional salivary gland surgery, these procedures treat glands instead of removing them entirely, allowing patients to avoid the side effects of removal. Surgical gland removal is only performed in rare cases where minimally-invasive procedures aren’t able to remove the stone.

Small and some medium salivary gland stones are primarily treated with sialendoscopy, a minimally-invasive outpatient procedure that extracts the stones. Amm ENT is a national leader in this cutting-edge treatment and one of only two institutions in the Philadelphia region offering it.

Looking for General Dentistry

GENERAL DENTISTRY

If left untreated, a minor dental problem can develop into a serious condition. To spare yourself the trouble and expense of more intensive treatment, it is advisable that you get your teeth checked regularly.

At AMM DENTAL CLINIC, we specialise in general dentistry:

Under the General Dentist

• Scaling and Cleaning
• Extraction
• Surgical extraction
• Wisdom teeth  extraction
• Dentures- Partial and Full
• Implant Dentures
• Tooth whitening
• Children Dentistry

Visit us as soon as possible if you are suffering from the following:

• Toothache
• Broken or chipped teeth
• Loss of filling or crown
• Denture repair
• Dental trauma

We offer emergency dental services as well