As periodontists, our main focus is on helping you save your adult, permanent teeth whenever possible. You can protect your dental health by maintaining routine dental visits and taking time to brush, floss and rinse with mouthwash daily as recommended by your dentist. Good dental care can go a long way to keeping tooth decay and gum disease from damaging your smile.
Minimizing Bacterial Growth and Harmful Inflammation
Our periodontist works to save permanent teeth by helping you prevent harmful bacterial growth in your mouth and in particular, lowering the amount of periodontal pathogenic bacteria. Combining this approach with educating patients about following a consistent daily oral hygiene routine can go a long way to ensuring a healthier smile.
Sometimes this also means having more frequent cleanings to control any developing periodontal pockets and prevent bone loss from advancing gum disease. And thanks to leading-edge periodontal techniques and state-of-the-art equipment, periodontal surgery today allows us to save your teeth with minimal discomfort and quicker healing times. This is good news if you have a tooth that requires extraction by our periodontist.
Why See a Periodontist for Tooth Removal?
As periodontists, we specialize in saving natural teeth through treatments that help you rebuild gum tissue that is healthy as well as turn bone loss around (growing back with bone grafting). But when your smile has suffered from a bacterial infection that destroyed precious gum tissue, teeth roots and the bone structure beneath the gums, that is when the tooth will need to be extracted. Fortunately, your smile will be in good hands with our periodontist if your dentist refers you.
What To Expect From Your Tooth Extraction
While people are often a little apprehensive when getting a tooth removed, fortunately, the extraction itself is actually fairly painless. You will be made comfortable and relaxed thanks to sedation dentistry and local anesthetics applied as needed. Post-surgery discomfort varies per person. You can expect to feel a level of discomfort while your mouth continues to heal from the extraction but your post-op discomfort should be minimized with the help of medications.
Work for a Smooth Recovery
-Get all the rest you need after your extraction and don’t perform any strenuous activity (or heavy lifting). Lifting can dislodge the blood clot, leaving you with a dry socket. This will expose your bone to harmful bacteria, oral debris and air which not only hurts but could potentially result in infection. Follow your post-surgery instructions carefully to promote faster healing without interfering with vital blood clot formation. Over time, your blood clot will be replaced by bone and gum tissue as the area continues to heal.
-During your first two weeks after your surgery, don’t use straws, smoke or rinse your mouth vigorously. This kind of suction could loosen a blood clot and leave you with a painful dry socket. You can still brush your teeth, gently, near the extraction site and after the initial 24 hours post-surgery, you can gently rinse your mouth using a provided antibacterial oral rinse.
-For the first week after your surgery, stick to a soft diet and don’t eat crunchy foods as they can harden and become stuck in the socket, irritating the area. Great alternatives include enjoying smoothies without a straw, yogurt, protein drinks, pudding, mashed potatoes, eggs, warm soups and stews.
-Applying an ice pack to the cheek near the site, and keeping your head slightly elevated can help with swelling. Frozen veggies make great ice packs, and you can hold it on the cheek for 10 minutes, rest for 15 to 20 minutes, then apply the pack for an additional 10 minutes to minimize swelling.
Tooth Replacement Options
Once your extraction site has healed, you may be able to replace the tooth so the bones in your mouth don’t weaken or experience loss in density, causing the remaining teeth to shift. Tooth replacement options include dental implants, removable partial dentures or a fixed bridge. Removing a problem tooth and replacing it will make your mouth look and feel as good as new!