At Southfield Dental, our experienced dental team provide a variety of oral surgery options to address any issues you may be facing. There are many reasons why you may need surgery to restore your oral health, such as extensive decay, a broken tooth or baby teeth failing to fall out. Therefore, you may require more extensive surgery from our qualified and professional dental team to resolve the issue, including tooth extractions, root removal, and apicectomies (there are details of all other oral surgery procedures to follow)
If your tooth has been severely damaged by decay, and traditional fillings and crowns have not proved successful, you may need to have it extracted. This involves removing the tooth completely from its socket in the bone. Such a procedure is particularly common for those who have overcrowded teeth, baby teeth that haven’t fallen out or are receiving radiation treatment for cancer of the neck and head.
With a simple extraction, we will loosen the tooth with an instrument called an elevator, before removing it with forceps. However, if you have a tooth that has broken off at the gum line, or has not come through yet, you will need a surgical extraction.
Typically performed by our surgical team, a ‘surgical extraction’ involves making a small cut in your gum and may require removing some of the bone around the tooth.
If you have an infection at the root of your tooth which cannot be resolved with root canal surgery, an apicoectomy may be required. We’ll first cut the gum to assess the condition of the root. If it’s strong enough, clean the infection and remove the tip, before sealing the end to prevent future infection.
A hemisection is a procedure where some or half of an injured tooth is removed and can only be performed on molars due to their strength and ability to function as normal after surgery. First, we will make a small cut in your gum to expose the root of the tooth. The root is then split in two, and the damaged section is removed. Next, the gap is thoroughly cleaned with a saline solution and fitted with a temporary crown before a permanent one is created and fixed with dental cement.
As wisdom teeth are the last teeth to erupt, there is often insufficient room left in your mouth to accommodate them. This means some can become impacted underneath the gum line, which causes painful swelling and tenderness, requiring their removal. If your wisdom teeth have fully erupted, they can be extracted under local anaesthetic, or IV sedation and general anaesthetic if they are impacted.
When removing an infected tooth, either simply or surgically, there is residual granulation or cystic tissue left in the bone. This is unhealthy tissue and ideally needs to be removed. The dentist will advise you if there any enuclation (or cleaning) of the bone necessary. This is particularly important where implants may be considered after.
The bone that the teeth are fixed into is the alveolar bone. At the time of implant surgery, and sometimes for other reasons, this needs to be either ‘added to’ which is augmentation, or ‘removed’ which is resection. The dentist will always explain in detail the reasons and the methods used
Oral surgery has been performed for hundreds of years and is the basics of dental intervention. In general, very damaged teeth will need to be removed. However, the methods by which teeth are removed and indeed conserved, has changed and the approach to surgery is generally, less invasive.
We will always use appropriate local aesthetic so you cannot feel any pain during the procedure, and will ensure that you are healing well before you leave, and are clear about all the instructions necessary to promote good healing.
There are surgical methods that we can use to save even very damaged teeth, and we will explain these to you in more detail.