How Teeth Are Extracted At Professional Dental Clinic

Those teeth that have cavities, decay, infections or even broken or chipped teeth have to be extracted to preserve your oral health and aesthetics. Does the thought of tooth extraction frighten you? Well, knowing how a tooth is extracted at the dentist would surely ease your own tooth extraction experience.

• You’ll get an anesthetic injection from your dentist before the tooth extraction procedure begins. You may get local anesthesia around the area of the tooth to be extracted, or even general anesthesia that would put you to sleep. Either way, the procedure would not hurt you!


• At first, the tooth will be loosened from the periodontal ligament fibers. This will be done by using a piece of thin blade-like equipment, called the periotome.


• The surrounding gum tissues around the tooth that is to be removed, will be widened to loosen the tooth further. Following that, an elevator will be used to loosen the tooth further.


• To get the tooth extracted, forceps will be used. It will grab your teeth and gently stroke it back and forth in an attempt to uproot it. In case a tooth is too hard to uproot, it will be removed piece-by-piece.


• Once the tooth is extracted, the dentist will stitch the extraction area with the help of self-dissolving stitches. This will prevent excessive bleeding from the region. Very often, a blood clot forms in the socket after the extraction. To cover it, the dentist will give you a gauze pad to bite on it. If you bite it too hard though, the clot may break loose and lead to serious complications.

For a tooth that is supposed to be extracted but isn’t completely visible, the dentist has to resort to surgical extraction. As explained by News Medical,

In this procedure, an incision will be made to expose the tooth with a surgical flap. The tooth may also need to be sectioned into pieces to prevent trauma to the surrounding nerves and tissues as they are removed. The pieces can be loosened from the socket with an elevator, similar to the simple procedure. The fragments can then be removed one at a time in a specific sequence, with the curved roots being removed at the end.

You must be very careful for the first few days to care for the socket from which the tooth has been extracted. You may brush and floss your teeth, but make sure the toothbrush doesn’t come anywhere near to the injured socket. Do not put your tongue in the socket, no matter how tempting that may seem! Last but not least, abide by all the instructions laid out by your dentist, post tooth extraction.