Most Americans care a great deal about the health of their teeth, and a healthy mouth of teeth is something a person may take pride in. Healthy teeth won’t be painful, come loose, or look ugly, but a tooth infection or trauma may case all sorts of problems. Today’s American patients may visit their local dentist for anything from a routine checkup all the way to a full denture implant, or impacted tooth removal surgery. Oral surgery procedures may be done as well, such as lower jaw surgery. In other cases, though, the jaw is not an issue, and a tooth may be removed for all sorts of reasons. Or the opposite may be done, where missing teeth are replaced with dental bridges or full dentures (the latter being most common for the elderly). Even bleeding after tooth removal is something that may bring a patient to the dentist, as bleeding after tooth removal may be heavier than the dentist expected. This may suggest further problems. If bleeding after tooth removal presents itself, the patient may return for further care.
Tooth Removal
Sometimes, it is necessary to entirely remove a tooth from the mouth, and a patient may visit their regular dentist to get such a procedure done. Typically, the affected tooth or possibly the entire mouth will be numbed to prevent pain, and the dentist, and any dental assistants on hand, will remove that tooth. Why might this be done? In some cases, a wisdom tooth is the problem. The adult human mouth has 28 teeth in it, but wisdom teeth may grow in, and they go beyond that 28-tooth limit. If this happens, crowding may occur, when some teeth are pushed out of the way and deformed to make room for this unexpected tooth. It is quite normal for a person to get a wisdom tooth coming in, and it is due to no fault of the patient. Instead, they may visit their dentist and have this extra tooth numbed and extracted. Afterwards, bleeding after tooth removal may happen, and the dentist will tell their patient whether or not to expect bleeding. If unexpected or heavy bleeding after tooth removal happens, the patient must come back. This may vary from case to case, and a patient should listen carefully to what his or her dentist tells them.
A tooth may be removed from the mouth due to serious trauma or infection. An adult tooth will not grow back if lost, unlike baby teeth, so a damaged tooth should be removed in most cases. A tooth knocked loose by trauma will only cause the patient more discomfort and inconvenience in the mouth, so that patient is advised to have that tooth removed at the dentist, pain-free. This leaves a tooth gap that may be filled with a dental implant. And in other cases, a tooth is so badly infected that the only cure is to remove it before it falls out and the infection spreads further, so tooth removal may contain that infection so other teeth and the gums are not threatened. Heavy tobacco use may be another reason for tooth extraction, as tobacco may damage the gums and cause teeth to fall out over time. Chewing tobacco is often known to have this effect.
Tooth Replacement
A missing tooth can have an artificial replacement take its place, and this helps the patient restore a full mouth of teeth for aesthetics as well as eating and speech. If one tooth is missing, a dental bridge may fill in that gap. A dental bridge is a lifelike replica of the missing tooth that is held in place with covers that slip over the real teeth flanking the gap, and this bridge is modeled after the patient’s real teeth. Such a bridge takes time to develop, so a temporary one may be used in the meantime. Dentures, meanwhile, may replace entire rows of missing teeth or even all of them in the mouth at once. This is commonly done for the elderly, and dentures can be put in and taken back out at will. Such artificial teeth formations help a person eat and speak normally and may appear very similar to the real thing.
