At Brenham Family Dental, we know the fear that comes over you when we say we need to extract one of your teeth. The horror of having your tooth pulled out is not a pleasant image to imagine, but sometimes, as we tell our patients, it is a last resort.
Reasons When Pulling out a Tooth is the Last Resort
The particular times we do not see a way out or another option besides extracting your tooth is the following times:
– You have extra teeth coming out
– Your baby or milk teeth have not shifted yet
– There is no room for new teeth to come out
– You are getting radiation
– You are taking cancer medications, which have caused an infection to develop in your teeth
– The location of the infection
– You need to get your wisdom teeth removed
If your dentist has told you that they need to perform a tooth extraction, do not begin to dread it, but convey your concerns and fear to them. Your dentist will provide you with conscious sedation that will put you in a relaxed, but awake state. You can tell them to monitor your sedation in case you want a higher dose.
However, with conscious sedation, you will not be able to drive home yourself so ask someone else to drive you to the appointment. If you do not have anyone to take you to the dental clinic, ask the dentist to provide you with nitrous oxide gas.
The Day of Your Tooth Extraction Appointment
The dentist will extract the tooth out and prescribe painkillers to you to numb the pain of the procedure. Most probably, extracting the tooth will take two minutes, but cleaning the mouth and giving you general anesthesia may take longer. It also depends on the number of teeth the dentist needs to extract, and it may not be in one sitting, but multiple visits may be required.
Once your tooth is out and all the cleaning has been taken care of, the dentist will tell you to sit in the dental chair for a few minutes with a gauze in your mouth. How long you will be sitting with a gauze in your mouth depends on the nature of your tooth extraction. For instance:
1. The extraction of a milk tooth requires you to sit down for two to three minutes
2. The extraction of an adult tooth requires you to sit down for ten minutes.
3. The extraction of a tooth that requires a surgical incision and stitches requires you to sit down for half an hour or more.
The amount of time people bite down on a gauze depends on the amount of bleeding that occurs after the tooth extraction procedure, as the point of sitting still with a gauze in your mouth is to stop the bleeding.
To inquire about Brenham Family Dental tooth extraction procedure, please make appointment with us.