What Should Happen After A Dentist Extracts A Tooth?
Dentists have a considerable number of ways to restore an injured tooth—even one that has suffered seemingly catastrophic damage. Teeth that have broken after an accident causing blunt force, teeth that have corroded under years of untreated decay—a dentist's ability to use a variety of restorative materials and methods to make the tooth look (and feel) pristine can seem close to miraculous. But these abilities have limits. Sometimes, extraction is the only possible outcome for a tooth.
Serious Damage
Severe impact injuries that have vertically cracked the tooth from the tip of its crown to its root, decay that has destroyed too much of the tooth's structure so that it cannot practically support an artificial restoration—these are instances when your dentist, with regret, will recommend that the tooth is extracted. Leaving such a damaged tooth in your dental arch can create significant oral health problems. When the tooth is infected, this infection can conceivably spread and devastate surrounding teeth and gum tissues. A broken, albeit non-infected tooth is liable to break off without warning, potentially harming the soft tissues inside your mouth.
Prosthetic Options
So, there are key circumstances when a tooth must be extracted to preserve your oral health. A dentist won't extract a tooth without first formulating a plan for replacing it. There are several prosthetic options to replace a missing permanent tooth, but you'll probably prioritize the option that most looks, feels, and works like a natural tooth, and this is a dental implant fitted with a ceramic tooth. Dental implants can be fitted almost immediately after tooth extraction, and this usually results in a better experience for the patient.
Healing Time
Waiting multiple weeks or months to fill a gap with a dental implant gives the dental socket and jawbone time to heal. This is expected, and as far as your body is concerned, necessary. But dental implant surgery on intact hard and soft tissues can be more invasive, and even slightly more traumatic than installing an implant in tissues that haven't yet healed.
Removal and Replacement
It won't necessarily happen in the same appointment as your tooth extraction, but your dentist will have planned your implant surgery and created a customized surgical guide for your implantation prior to extraction. The tooth will be removed, and at a proceeding appointment in the coming days, your implant (a titanium screw) will be inserted into your jaw. This is the optimal healing process for an implant, as the bone simultaneously heals its missing tooth and heals the introduction of the implant. The implant integrates with the bone, and can now support the bite force of a tooth. The tooth is ceramic and looks precisely like your missing tooth.
If a tooth must be extracted, don't be surprised if your dentist wants to schedule dental implant surgery at the same time.
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