LEARN MORE ABOUT ORAL SURGERY OPTIONS AND OUR PROCESS
Oral surgery might be recommended at times when teeth need to be removed. Teeth often require removal if there is extensive decay or fracture of the tooth and it cannot be restored or preserved. If a tooth requires root canal therapy but a patient choses not to proceed, the other option is extraction of the tooth.
Sometimes, periodontal disease progresses to the point where there is extensive bone loss around the tooth and it becomes mobile. When this happens, the tooth prognosis is poor and it often needs removal.
In the case of wisdom teeth, they often don’t have room in the jaw to erupt and/or are not coming in straight. Sometimes they have enough room to erupt but the hygiene is difficult and they can get decay which is also very hard to restore due to difficult access and isolation. It is for these reasons that wisdom teeth extractions are often recommended. These extractions are ideally done before the age of 25. Bone in young patients is often more flexible which aids in removal of the teeth. The healing is often less compromised in younger people so they recover faster. Also, the less time the wisdom teeth are there, the less chance they have of causing conditions such as pain, infection, damage to the adjacent teeth, alteration of the bite/occlusion. Removal often helps achieve optimal oral health. At Hometown Dental, we also have a 3D cone beam CT xray machine that allows us to evaluate the placement of the wisdom teeth in all dimensions and in relation to important structures (ie: nerves and sinuses) to help plan surgery or aid in need for referral to an oral surgeon in really difficult cases.
For people who have many missing teeth and poor prognosis of the remaining teeth, we can also provide full mouth extractions and the fabrication of immediate dentures.
At Hometown Dental, we highly recommend ridge preservation after single tooth extractions, especially if an implant will be placed in the future. After the tooth is removed and the socket cleaned, a synthetic bone graft material is placed in the socket. Over time, this will stimulate bone growth in the area and will become integrated into the jaw bone. It will help ensure that there is adequate bone in which to place the implant as our jaw bone normally shrinks after teeth are removed.
We can provide many oral surgery services in our office including:
- Single tooth extractions
- Full mouth extractions
- Wisdom teeth extractions
