Almost half of UK adults over 30 have some form of gum disease. Most don't realize it until bleeding gums become normal, or until their dentist mentions something about "pockets" during a checkup.
The thing about gum disease is that it progresses in stages, and each stage costs more to treat than the last. A £199 deep cleaning at stage one becomes £4,000+ surgical treatment at stage four. The gap between those numbers represents years of avoided dental visits and normalized warning signs.
Here's what gum disease treatment actually costs in the UK, what each stage involves, and why the economics strongly favor catching it early.
Understanding Gum Disease Stages
Gum disease isn't a single condition. It's a progression through increasingly serious stages, each with different symptoms and treatment requirements.
Gingivitis (Stage 1) starts with bacterial plaque accumulating at the gum line. Your gums become inflamed, appearing red and swollen instead of their normal pink. They bleed when you brush or floss. At this stage, there's no bone loss yet, which means gingivitis is completely reversible with proper treatment.
Early Periodontitis (Stage 2) develops when gingivitis isn't treated. The infection spreads below the gum line, and your gums start pulling away from your teeth, creating small pockets typically 1-2mm deep. Radiographic examinations show up to 15% bone loss in the coronal region. The damage at this stage can still be stopped and partially reversed with professional intervention.
Moderate Periodontitis (Stage 3) represents a critical turning point. The infection has advanced significantly, destroying connective tissue and bone that support your teeth. Pocket depths increase to 4-6mm. Your gums are swollen and bleed during brushing. Teeth may start shifting position or feel slightly loose when you push on them. The bone loss becomes more substantial, and treatment becomes more complex.
Advanced Periodontitis (Stage 4) is where teeth become noticeably loose. Deep pockets of 7mm or more form between teeth and gums. Severe bone loss makes teeth shift or hurt when you chew. At this stage, teeth often fall out on their own, or require extraction because the supporting structures have been destroyed.
The progression through these stages happens faster than most people expect. Plaque buildup reaches its peak within four days, with visible gingivitis symptoms appearing by day five. If left untreated, gingivitis can progress to irreversible periodontitis within a matter of weeks.
What Each Stage Costs to Treat
Treatment costs scale dramatically with disease progression.
Gingivitis treatment (Stage 1) costs £89-£195 for professional cleaning. Your dentist or hygienist removes plaque and tartar buildup using specialized equipment, then teaches you proper brushing and flossing techniques. Regular follow-up appointments ensure your gums are healing properly. At this stage, you're essentially paying to have someone thoroughly clean what you couldn't reach at home, combined with education on preventing recurrence. Book a professional cleaning to catch gum disease early when it's still completely reversible.
Early periodontitis treatment (Stage 2) costs £199-£400 for deep cleaning (scaling and root planing). This is more invasive than regular cleaning because your dentist needs to access areas below the gum line. They remove plaque and tartar from tooth roots, then smooth the root surfaces to help gums reattach and prevent future bacterial accumulation. Local anesthetic is typically used because the procedure reaches sensitive areas. Treatment at this stage requires multiple appointments and diligent home care to prevent progression.
Moderate periodontitis treatment (Stage 3) costs £400-£1,500. At this stage, deep cleaning alone may not be sufficient. Your periodontist might recommend additional procedures like antibiotic treatment to control infection, or minor surgical interventions to access and clean deep pockets that standard instruments can't reach. Multiple appointments are required, and the treatment plan becomes more complex and time-consuming.
Advanced periodontitis treatment (Stage 4) costs £1,000-£4,000+, potentially much more for severe cases requiring multiple surgical procedures. Treatment at this stage often involves flap surgery (£1,000-£3,000), where gum tissue is lifted back to allow deep cleaning of tooth roots and repair of damaged bone. Gum grafts may be necessary to address severe recession (£600-£1,200 per tooth). Some teeth might require extraction and replacement with dental implants (from £2,600 per tooth). Full mouth treatment can reach £7,000-£9,000 or more when extensive reconstruction is needed.
The financial progression is stark. What could have been resolved with a £199 deep cleaning becomes thousands of pounds in surgical procedures and tooth replacement. The five-year cost of ignoring bleeding gums can easily exceed £10,000 when multiple teeth require implants.
Why People Wait Until It's Expensive
Most people with gum disease don't know they have it. The condition often progresses without pain, especially in early stages. Bleeding gums become normalized as "just how my gums are." Bad breath gets attributed to food choices rather than bacterial infection. Slight tooth mobility doesn't register as urgent until teeth become noticeably loose.
By the time obvious symptoms appear, the disease has typically progressed past the easily reversible stage. Your gums have been inflamed for months or years. Bone loss has occurred. The bacterial infection has established itself in areas that regular brushing can't reach.
The other factor is that gum disease progresses in episodes. There are phases where tissue is actively destroyed, and longer phases where nothing seems to be getting worse. This creates a false sense that the problem has stabilized or resolved itself. It hasn't. Periodontitis doesn't go away without treatment.
The Hidden Costs of Advanced Gum Disease
Beyond the direct treatment costs, advanced gum disease creates cascading expenses that people rarely anticipate when they skip dental appointments.
When you lose teeth to periodontal disease, eating becomes difficult. You start avoiding foods that require proper chewing, which often means gravitating toward softer, processed options that are worse for your overall health. The nutritional impact accumulates over years.
Tooth loss affects your appearance and self-confidence in ways that extend beyond aesthetics. Speaking clearly becomes challenging when multiple teeth are missing. Social situations become uncomfortable. Career opportunities can be affected when you're self-conscious about smiling or speaking.
Missing teeth also accelerate bone loss in your jaw. Without tooth roots to stimulate the jawbone, it gradually deteriorates. This makes future dental implants more expensive because bone grafting becomes necessary before implants can be placed. What could have been a straightforward £2,600 implant becomes £3,200-£3,600 with required grafting.
The systemic health connections matter too. Untreated periodontitis is associated with increased risk of heart disease, diabetes complications, respiratory disease, and pregnancy complications. While these connections don't show up on your dental bill, they represent real health consequences with their own costs.
What Treatment Actually Involves
Understanding what happens during treatment helps explain why costs increase with disease progression.
Professional cleaning for gingivitis is straightforward. Your hygienist uses ultrasonic scalers to remove plaque and tartar from tooth surfaces and just below the gum line. The appointment typically lasts 30-60 minutes. You leave with cleaner teeth and specific instructions on improving your home oral hygiene routine.
Scaling and root planing for early periodontitis requires more time and precision. Your dentist works below the gum line, removing bacterial deposits from tooth roots. The root surfaces are smoothed to eliminate rough spots where bacteria accumulate. Local anesthetic is used because the procedure reaches sensitive areas. Treatment is usually done in quadrants over multiple appointments, with each session lasting 60-90 minutes.
Surgical treatment for advanced periodontitis involves lifting back gum tissue to access deep pockets and damaged bone. Your periodontist cleans bacteria and debris from around tooth roots, repairs damaged bone if possible, and repositions gum tissue to reduce pocket depth. Recovery takes several weeks. Multiple surgeries may be needed if the disease affects different areas of your mouth.
The complexity explains the cost progression. Early treatment requires standard dental tools and straightforward procedures. Advanced treatment requires surgical expertise, multiple appointments, and complex reconstructive work to repair damage that accumulated over years.
Prevention vs Treatment Economics
The economics of prevention versus treatment are remarkably clear with gum disease.
Regular dental checkups cost £65 twice per year (£90 annually). Professional cleanings cost £89-£119. Combined, you're looking at £178-£208 per year to maintain healthy gums and catch problems early.
Compare this to the costs of treating established disease. A single course of scaling and root planing costs £199-£400. Surgical treatment for advanced periodontitis runs £1,000-£4,000+. Tooth replacement with dental implants starts at £2,600 per tooth.
The five-year cost comparison is striking. Regular prevention costs approximately £890-£1,040 over five years. Treatment for advanced gum disease in a single year can exceed £10,000 when multiple teeth require surgical intervention and replacement.
Beyond the financial aspect, prevention preserves your natural teeth. Once bone loss occurs, it's permanent. Once teeth are lost, they're replaced but never quite the same as what you were born with. The difference in quality of life between maintaining your natural teeth and managing the consequences of tooth loss is substantial.
What Your Gums Are Telling You
Your gums provide clear signals when something's wrong, long before serious damage occurs.
Healthy gums are firm, pink, and don't bleed during normal brushing or flossing. They fit snugly around your teeth without gaps or pockets. When you run your tongue along the gum line, it feels smooth and even.
Inflamed gums from gingivitis become red or purplish instead of pink. They swell slightly and feel tender when you brush. Bleeding occurs during flossing or brushing, or sometimes when eating firm foods like apples. Your breath might smell bad even right after brushing. These symptoms appear within days of plaque accumulation reaching problematic levels.
Early periodontitis adds new symptoms. Your gums start pulling away from your teeth, making them look longer than they used to. Small gaps or pockets form between teeth and gums. You notice bad taste in your mouth that doesn't go away with mouthwash. Food gets stuck between teeth more easily than before.
Advanced periodontitis makes the problems obvious. Your teeth become loose or shift position. Chewing becomes painful. Your bite feels different. Pus appears between teeth and gums. Teeth start falling out.
The key insight is that these symptoms progress in a predictable sequence. By the time obvious symptoms appear, the disease is well-established. The warning signs that seem minor, that bleeding when you floss, that slight swelling, those are the symptoms that matter most because they appear when treatment is still straightforward and inexpensive.
Making Sense of Treatment Options
When you're diagnosed with gum disease, understanding your treatment options helps you make informed decisions about both the clinical and financial aspects.
For gingivitis, treatment focuses on removing what's causing the problem: bacterial plaque. Professional cleaning eliminates the buildup you can't remove at home. Your dentist then monitors your progress over several appointments to ensure the inflammation resolves. Success depends on improving your home oral hygiene routine. If you go back to inadequate brushing and flossing, the gingivitis returns.
For early periodontitis, deep cleaning addresses bacterial deposits below the gum line that regular brushing can't reach. Your dentist removes plaque and tartar from tooth roots, then smooths the surfaces to help your gums reattach. Antibiotic treatment might be added to control infection in deeper pockets. The goal is to stop progression and reduce pocket depths back to healthy levels.
For moderate to advanced periodontitis, surgical options become necessary because non-surgical treatment can't access the affected areas. Flap surgery allows your periodontist to clean deep pockets and repair damaged bone. Gum grafts rebuild tissue lost to recession. Bone grafts encourage bone regeneration in areas where periodontal disease destroyed supporting structures. Some teeth may be too damaged to save and require extraction.
The treatment decision isn't always straightforward. A tooth that's borderline savable might last another five years with extensive periodontal treatment costing £1,500-£2,000, or it could be extracted and replaced with an implant costing £2,600. The "right" choice depends on factors beyond just cost, including your overall oral health, how many teeth are affected, and your long-term dental goals.
The Reality About Reversal
One of the most important things to understand about gum disease is which stages can be reversed and which represent permanent damage.
Gingivitis is completely reversible. When caught early, before any bone loss occurs, proper cleaning and improved oral hygiene can return your gums to perfect health within weeks. The inflammation resolves, bleeding stops, and your gums return to their normal pink color and firm texture. It's as if the gingivitis never happened.
Once periodontitis develops, reversal becomes impossible. The bone loss that occurs when infection spreads below the gum line is permanent. Treatment can stop the disease from progressing further, reduce inflammation, and eliminate infection, but it cannot restore lost bone or regenerate destroyed tissue. Advanced surgical techniques can sometimes encourage limited bone growth, but the structural damage remains.
This is why the economic argument for catching gum disease early is so compelling. A £199 deep cleaning at the periodontitis stage doesn't reverse existing damage, it only prevents more damage from occurring. Compare this to a £119 professional cleaning at the gingivitis stage, which eliminates the problem entirely before permanent damage occurs.
The window of opportunity for complete reversal is narrow. Within weeks of gingivitis developing, the infection can progress past the reversible stage. The difference between "this is completely fixed" and "we've stopped it from getting worse" comes down to catching symptoms early and acting immediately.
Long-Term Maintenance After Treatment
Successfully treating gum disease doesn't mean you're finished with periodontal care. The bacterial infection that caused the disease in the first place hasn't disappeared from your mouth, it's just been controlled.
After scaling and root planing, most patients need periodontal maintenance cleanings every 3-4 months (£130 per visit) instead of standard 6-month checkups. These appointments aren't regular cleanings. They're specialized procedures targeting areas where periodontal disease was active, removing bacterial accumulation before it causes new damage.
The ongoing cost matters when comparing treatment options. A patient who needs four periodontal maintenance appointments yearly spends £520 on cleanings alone. Over five years, maintenance costs add up to £2,600, which is more than the original deep cleaning treatment. These costs are in addition to regular dental checkups and any other dental work you need.
Patients who don't maintain their prescribed cleaning schedule often see disease recurrence. The periodontal pockets that were reduced through treatment become reinfected. Bone loss resumes. Within a few years, they're back to needing more extensive treatment. The initial investment in controlling the disease was wasted because the maintenance wasn't maintained.
The positive side is that periodontal maintenance preserves the results of your treatment. Your gums remain healthy. Bone loss doesn't progress. Teeth stay stable. The maintenance cost is the price of keeping things where they are, rather than sliding backward into more expensive problems.
What Your Dentist Looks For
During gum disease screening, your dentist measures specific indicators that determine disease stage and treatment needs.
Pocket depth measurement involves using a thin probe marked in millimeters. Your dentist gently inserts this probe between your tooth and gum to measure how deep the space goes. Healthy gums have pocket depths of 3mm or less. Depths of 4mm or more indicate gingivitis or periodontitis has developed. Pockets deeper than 6mm suggest advanced disease requiring surgical treatment.
Bleeding during probing tells your dentist about active inflammation. Healthy gum tissue doesn't bleed when touched with a probe. Bleeding indicates that bacterial infection is causing tissue breakdown and inflammation. The amount and pattern of bleeding helps determine disease severity.
Gum recession measurement tracks how much gum tissue has been lost. Your dentist compares the current gum line position to where it should be based on tooth anatomy. Significant recession exposes tooth roots, creates sensitivity, and indicates that periodontal disease has destroyed supporting tissue.
X-rays reveal bone loss that isn't visible during visual examination. The pattern and extent of bone loss around tooth roots indicates disease progression. Radiographs also help identify other problems that might be contributing to gum disease, like cavities near the gum line or calculus deposits below the gum line.
Tooth mobility testing determines how much support has been lost. Your dentist gently pushes on your teeth to see how much they move. Slight mobility might be normal, but excessive movement indicates that bone loss has progressed to where teeth are no longer firmly anchored.
These measurements create a baseline that guides treatment decisions and tracks whether treatment is working. Follow-up appointments after treatment compare new measurements to baseline readings to verify that pocket depths are reducing, bleeding has stopped, and bone loss has stabilized.
Making the Economic Decision
When faced with a gum disease diagnosis, the financial aspect influences treatment decisions whether we acknowledge it or not.
The £199 deep cleaning for early periodontitis feels expensive until you consider the alternative. Skipping treatment means the disease progresses to moderate periodontitis requiring £400-£1,500 in surgical treatment within a few years. Skip that treatment, and you're looking at £2,600+ per tooth for implants when teeth start falling out.
Payment plans make expensive treatment more accessible, but they don't change the underlying economics. Paying £200 per month for 12 months to cover a £2,400 periodontal treatment doesn't cost less than £2,400, it just spreads the pain across time. The treatment still costs more than it would have cost years earlier when the disease was in its early stages.
The reality is that dental disease doesn't wait for convenient timing. Periodontitis continues progressing whether you can easily afford treatment or not. The longer you wait to address it, the more expensive and complex treatment becomes. There's no scenario where ignoring gum disease saves money in the long run.
For people facing financial constraints, the strategic move is to prioritize treatment while disease is still in its early, less expensive stages. A £199 deep cleaning might feel like a lot when money is tight, but it's dramatically less than the thousands you'll spend later if the disease progresses. Prevention and early intervention aren't just good for your health, they're sound financial strategy.
The best time to treat gum disease was when it was gingivitis and could be completely reversed with a professional cleaning. The second-best time is right now, before it progresses to the next, more expensive stage.