Things That Can Go Wrong With the Mouth

Proper dental care is essential to good oral health. This includes a good diet, brushing and flossing after eating, and regular dental checkups.

Common mouth diseases and conditions include:

• Aphthous stomatitis (canker sores). Canker sores are a common form of mouth ulcer that girls get more often than guys. Although their cause is not completely understood, mouth injuries, stress, dietary deficiencies, hormonal changes (as with the menstrual cycle), or food allergies can trigger them. They usually appear on the inner surface of the cheeks or lips, under the tongue, on the soft palate, or at the base of the gums, and begin with a tingling or burning sensation followed by a painful sore called an ulcer. Pain subsides in 7 to 10 days, with complete healing usually occurring in 1 to 3 weeks.
• Cleft lip and cleft palate are birth defects in which the tissues of the mouth and/or lip don't form properly as a fetus is developing in the womb. Children born with cleft lip or cleft palate can have reconstructive surgery in infancy — and sometimes later — to repair the cleft. This surgery can prevent or lessen the severity of speech problems later in life.
• Enteroviral stomatitis is a common type of infection. People with this condition have small, painful ulcers inside their mouths that may decrease their desire to eat and drink, putting them at risk of dehydration.
• Herpetic stomatitis (oral herpes). Oral herpes causes painful, clustered blisters inside the mouth or on a person's lip. People can get this infection when they have direct contact (such as kissing!) with someone with the herpes simplex virus.
• Periodontal disease. Periodontal (pronounced: pare-ee-oh-don-tul) disease affects the gums and tissues supporting the teeth. Gingivitis (pronounced: jin-jih-vy-tus), an inflammation of the gums characterized by redness, swelling, and sometimes bleeding, is one common form of periodontal disease. It's usually caused by the accumulation of tartar (a hardened film of food particles and bacteria that builds up on teeth). Gingivitis is almost always the result of not brushing and flossing the teeth properly. When gingivitis isn't treated, it can lead to periodontitis, in which the gums loosen around the teeth and pockets of bacteria and pus form, sometimes damaging the supporting bone and causing tooth loss.

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