When Are Tooth Extractions Necessary in Dentistry?

It seems like a double standard for a dentist to recommend removing your natural teeth when the primary goal of dentistry is to save teeth and improve their health. While that may seem like the case, it is not the entire truth. Sometimes the only way that a dentist near you can preserve your oral health is by performing tooth extractions in Houston.

Even though you do not need to resolve to extract your natural teeth every time you have a problem. There are instances where tooth extractions near you are the best remedy for your oral cavity. The challenge, however, is in determining when it is fit to save your natural teeth and when you must have them removed.

What Are Dental Extractions?

They are dental procedures that involve permanently removing a tooth from the jawbone. This means pulling out the tooth right from the root. Technically, a dentist will use special dental tools to pull out particular teeth in your mouth for particular reasons. When it comes to the performance of tooth extractions in Houston, TX, there are two main approaches:

1. Straightforward extraction – when a tooth is visible and easily accessible, your dentist will only use dental tools to pull it out.
2. Surgical extraction – this approach is performed for problematic teeth and those that are not easily accessible and physically visible. The dentist may have to cut open your gum tissue to expose the tooth trapped underneath. This is specifically an approach for impacted teeth. In other cases, your dentist may have to break the affected tooth into small parts, then remove it piece by piece. This is especially the case for stubborn teeth.

When Is Tooth Extraction Necessary?

Before you go seeking for tooth extraction in South Houston, TX, for every dental problem you have, here are some of the common aspects that necessitate this kind of dental procedure:

1. Severely decayed tooth – for dental cavities and mildly decayed teeth, there are different dental solutions to treat teeth. However, when the decay is too far gone, it greatly compromises the structure of your tooth so that saving it ceases to be an option. Unfortunately, dental decay is the number one reason why many patients lose their natural teeth.
2. Overcrowded teeth – in orthodontics, one of the dental issues corrected in an overcrowded mouth. It happens when a patient has more teeth in the mouth than should be the case. This problem arises when the baby teeth are not extracted promptly, and the adult teeth still grow as they should. For such cases, an orthodontist recommends pulling out some of the teeth to create space for the other teeth to fit in properly. In other cases, the size of your teeth may be too big for the available space in your jawbone. An alternative for this problem in orthodontics is to pull out one or two of your teeth, creating room for the rest of them to align properly in the jawbone.
3. Teeth affected by periodontitis – it is an infection of the gum tissue, usually so severe that it damages more than the gums. This infection attacks the gum tissue, causing the recession thereof. It also attacks the bone tissue of the jawbone, causing degeneration. When these two issues happen in your oral cavity, they compromise the stability and support system of your teeth. The teeth, therefore, begin to loosen and can even fall off on their own. Dentists typically recommend dental extractions for extremely severe cases of periodontitis, to benefit the oral health of the patient.
4. Impacted teeth – natural teeth should grow properly without the need for intervention by a dental expert. However, it is not always the case. Sometimes teeth can grow improperly, such that part of the tooth remains stuck under the gum tissue. The tooth can also grow in the wrong direction causing other dental issues. For such, a dentist may recommend extracting the impacted tooth.
5. Problematic wisdom teeth – similar to impacted teeth, wisdom teeth can also be problematic when they grow. Sometimes it has to do with small spaces in your upper or lower jawbone, making it impossible for your wisdom teeth to grow as they should. Such are wisdom teeth that are extracted in dentistry.