Oral surgery is a way to address problems too severe for your general dentist or orthodontist to handle. To correct these concerns and offer aesthetically pleasing results, our team can provide oral surgical procedures. In today’s blog, your Santa Rosa , CA, oral and maxillofacial surgeons talk about the various concerns we can address.
Planning Treatment with Technology
Oral surgery can address major concerns with the function, appearance, and health of your smile. To offer treatment with precision and accuracy, we will carefully plan it using advanced technology. Our team begins by examining your smile with digital x-rays and CT imagery, which uses a fraction of the radiation that traditional systems require, and provides very detailed images of your smile instantly chairside, limiting your time in the chair. We then plan your oral surgery with precision, and can offer care to improve esthetics and function for your smile.
Ensuring Your Comfort
You may feel nervous about oral surgery, and worry about discomfort. But we take action to ensure our patients always enjoy a comfortable experience when undergoing treatment. We can administer a local anesthesia to the area being treated. In addition, we have dental sedation too. We can offer nitrous oxide, inhaled through a mask over the nose, to help you enter a calm and relaxed state, with effects that wear off quickly. For deeper states of calm, we can offer oral sedation in a pill or liquid form prior to treatment, or IV. You enter a deep state of calm, having little to no memory of the procedure afterward. The effects take time to wear off, so a friend or family member can bring you home, and we will provide aftercare instructions and any necessary prescriptions.
Wisdom Teeth
Once common oral surgery we offer is wisdom tooth extraction. Wisdom teeth are up to four new molars that erupt in the rear of the mouth, and are linked to misalignment, impacted teeth, infection, and other uncomfortable symptoms. To avoid these, we can simply remove them before they erupt. We also have general extraction to remove teeth and prepare a smile for implant dentures, or to aid in orthodontic care or address a severely damaged or decayed/infected tooth. The procedure could often take as little as 30 minutes.
Impacted Teeth
An impaction means a tooth has only partially erupted, which could happen for a number of reasons. For example, the premature loss of baby teeth could lead to complications with the arrival of permanent teeth. Or this could be due to issues with the growth of the jaw and the arrival of the teeth. When this occurs, we could bracket them into place. We attach a bracket to the impacted tooth and to a nearby one, and connect them with a chain. We then adjust tension in the chain to shift the tooth into proper position. For issues like wisdom tooth impaction, we could simply use oral surgery to remove the tooth entirely.
Missing Teeth
When you lose your teeth, this could lead to embarrassing gaps in your smile and issues with eating and speaking. You could also lose mass and density in your jaw, which causes further tooth loss and an aged appearance. But to replace the lost teeth and prevent these complications from arising, we could use oral surgery to provide dental implants. These are inserted directly into the jaw, where they preserve the structure. We then attach abutments to them before connecting a crown for an individual one, or a denture for more severe cases. These can last for decades, possibly even a lifetime, looking and functioning like natural teeth!
Weakened Jawbones
When your jaw loses mass and density as a result of tooth loss, this breakdown could prevent the placement of new implants and also cause an aged appearance. To rebuild the structure, we could use grafting for the lower jaw, adding new tissues to the jaw. The tissues could be from synthetic or donor sources, or taken from your own jaw or hip. This leaves your smile ready to support dental implants. We could also address the upper portion by raising the sinus floor, uncovering new tissues to support the dental implants.
Facial Trauma
If you sustain a serious facial injury or laceration, then we can offer treatment with oral surgery!
Imbalanced Jaw
When you have poor symmetry in the jaw, we could offer correction with jaw surgery, which also improves overall facial esthetics too and prevents long term complications!
Do You Have Questions About Improving Your Smile?
We would like to help you avoid major complications with your oral health and smile function. If you would like to learn more about the options we use to improve your oral health and smile beauty, then contact your Santa Rosa, CA, oral surgeons by calling 707-545-4625.
