When you need treatment for a serious and complex oral health concern, such as the removal of wisdom teeth, we can help with oral surgery. Wisdom teeth can otherwise lead to serious complications with the health, beauty, and function of your smile. In today’s blog, your Overland Park and Prairie Village, KS, prosthodontist talks how we extract wisdom teeth.
The Potential Risks of Your Third Molars
Wisdom teeth, also known as third molars, erupt in our late teens and early 20s. For many people, their arrival can mean serious problems for overall oral health. There is little room for them, so their arrival could cause teeth to shift, leading to misalignment that not only changes your smile’s appearance, but can lead to an increased risk of tooth decay and gum disease. They could damage teeth to lead to decay and infection, and could also only partially erupt, causing a painful impaction. But we can safeguard you from these complications by removing them before they erupt.
Planning and Preparing for Your Extraction
To begin, we will carefully examine your smile with detailed digital images and x-rays, so we can pinpoint the position of these teeth and plan their removal so we avoid blood vessels, sinus cavities, and nerve tissues. We will make sure you’re comfortable with a local anesthetic to the area where the extraction is taking place. We also have dental sedation to help you enter a calm and relaxed state, which can be very helpful for those with special needs or dental anxiety. We want your experience at our office to be a positive one!
Removing Your Wisdom Teeth
Once you’re comfortable and ready, we will open the gums to access and remove these teeth from your smile. We then suture the area closed. The sedation takes time to wear off, so have a friend or family member to bring you home. We need a clot to form and not dislodge as part of the healing process, so eat only soft foods for the first day or two, avoid straws, don’t prod the site with your tongue, and brush and floss very gently. We will look at your smile and remove any sutures in a follow-up visit, making sure your extraction site is healing as it should.
If you have any questions about how we plan and implement a tooth extraction to remove your wisdom teeth when contact our team today. We want to help you and your family maintain good oral health and attractive smiles!
Learn More About Tooth Extraction
With oral surgery, we can offer solutions to complex oral health concerns. To learn more about tooth extraction give a call to your Overland Park and Prairie Village, KS prosthodontist, Dr. Stuart Dexter, DDS at (913)362-8200 and schedule an appointment.