Dental radiography in companion animals reveals disease invisible to visual examination alone, making it an essential welfare tool that is increasingly standard in progressive veterinary dental practice.
Companion animal dental radiography is where the invisible welfare harm of subdiagnosed dental disease meets the practical solution. Without radiographs, a veterinarian cleaning a tooth that appears intact on the surface may miss the abscess beneath the root, the resorptive lesion undermining the crown, or the jaw bone loss that indicates severe periodontal disease. The animal wakes from anesthesia with the same invisible pain it came in with. Dental radiography changes this equation — revealing disease that can then be treated at the same anesthetic episode. The welfare improvement per procedure from comprehensive radiographic examination is substantial and represents a standard that should become universal in veterinary dental practice.