A lot of the problems that commonly affect people’s oral health are preventable under most circumstances. The reason they often develop is due to a vulnerability in your dental hygiene routine and/or preventive dental care schedule, even a slight one. The same is true for many of the conditions that lead to tooth loss or the need to extract a tooth, such as severe gum disease or extreme tooth decay. Today, we look at how usually preventable conditions can sometimes lead to the need for tooth extraction, and why waiting to remove the tooth could allow such conditions to grow even worse.
From minor to severe oral health problems
What can sometimes be confusing about the need for tooth extraction is the fact that the conditions leading to it are often treatable long before extraction becomes necessary. For example, tooth decay and tooth damage are not common cases where extraction is required because they can often be treated more conservatively with a custom-designed dental restoration. However, these conditions can grow more severe over time, and compromise a significant amount of your natural tooth structure, before you realize it. With conditions like gum disease, which is the number-one cause of adult tooth loss and extraction, you may not realize how severe the problem is until you visit your oral health specialist.
The need and purpose of extracting the tooth
When certain oral health conditions do become severe enough to require tooth extraction, the need for it is a serious one. Typically, preserving your healthy tooth structure is the best way to restore your smile. If your oral health specialist recommends extraction, it’s because there are no other options for successfully restoring and saving the tooth. This means the tooth can also pose a significant threat to the rest of your oral health the longer it remains, and extracting it may be best for the long-term health of the rest of your smile.
What could be next if you wait long enough
If you do wait much longer to extract a tooth after the procedure’s been recommended, you could leave your oral health open to a wide range of more severe risks. These risks you face depend on the specific nature of your tooth’s troubles; for instance, a severely damaged tooth can cause damage to nearby oral tissues and/or tooth structure. An extreme tooth infection can compromise the health of other oral tissues and structures if allowed to progress far enough. To preserve your oral health and avoid such complications, we suggest extracting the tooth as soon as possible.
Learn more about extracting a troublesome tooth
Saving your smile often means removing whatever threatens it, and sometimes, that something can be a severely compromised tooth. To learn more, or to schedule a consultation, call Santa Rosa Oral Surgery in Santa Rosa, CA, today at 707-545-4625.
