There may come a time in a patient’s life when a tooth gets infected by decay. When that happens, your Dallas, TX, dentist will work hard at saving it. Treatments for doing so include dental crowns, fillings, and root canals. But it may just happen that the tooth has to be removed. This is usually the dentist’s last choice. However, if a tooth is consistently infected, is broken, or if there is a baby tooth that is impeding an adult tooth, then tooth extraction is suggested. Patients can be nervous about this treatment, so let us learn more about it in today’s blog post.
What Takes Place During The Procedure And Afterward
Tooth extraction means that we are removing the tooth, including the roots, completely from your mouth. We want to help you feel comfortable during the treatment, so we will offer you dental sedation and a local anesthetic close to the area that we will be working on. After you are fully relaxed, we will carefully extract the tooth. The procedure does not take long, and once the tooth is removed, we use sutures to close the area. We recommend that you have a loved one pick you up from the office to drive you home since you will be groggy from the sedation. We can recommend pain relief and antibiotic medicine to take while you are healing. During this recovery time, we suggest you include soft foods in your diet and that you do not prod the area with your tongue or a straw when drinking. A follow-up appointment will be scheduled so that we can see how the area is healing and remove the sutures. After we determine that everything is looking good, you will be able to resume your normal daily habits.
What About Replacing The Tooth?
Having a gap in their smile is something that most patients do not want. A person’s biting and chewing functions can also be impacted by a missing tooth. With that in mind, there are other dental treatments that you could consider, like bridges, dentures, and implants, that can help fill in the gap. And if you are thinking about your wisdom teeth, they will only have to be removed if they are impacting other teeth by not coming in straight. This could cause misalignment, which may increase the risk of infection. If we see this happening, we will suggest that those teeth be extracted. They will not have to be replaced, though.
Schedule An Appointment With Us Today!
We are here to help provide you with a beautiful smile and address any oral health issues, like tooth extraction, quickly. For more information, schedule an appointment by calling Gentle Smiles in Dallas, TX, today at 972-329-7645 (972-329-SMILE).
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