Our team provides oral surgery to address serious concerns that threaten oral health, bite function, and smile beauty. We often work with your general dentist and your orthodontics as needed. In today’s blog, your Santa Rosa , CA, oral surgeons look at four common examples of the oral surgeries we provide to help your smile!
Anesthesia and Sedation
First, we want to let you know that we always take steps to ensure your oral surgery is a comfortable one. Our team will administer a local anesthetic to the areas being treated to keep you comfortable, and will have a trained anesthesiologist onsite to monitor you throughout the procedure. All treatments happen in-house, so we won’t send you to an unfamiliar location either. To help those undergoing extensive care, or to make treatment comfortable for people with special needs or anxiety, we also have dental sedation. We could offer nitrous oxide, oral sedation, and IV sedation, so you can enter a calm and relaxed state, with little to no memory of the procedure afterward. The option we select will depend on the extent of your treatment, as well as age, weight, medical history, and anxiety levels. These could be recommended for people of all ages, from pediatric patients to adults.
Bracketing Impacted Teeth
When a tooth is impacted, this means it only partially erupts, which can cause complications with the health of your smile, as well as the overall alignment. Fortunately, our team can gently bracket them into proper position. Our team will first connect a bracket to the tooth in question, and to an adjacent one. We connect the two with a small chain, and adjust tension in periodic visits to shift the impacted tooth to proper position.
Removing Wisdom Teeth
We can also remove wisdom teeth. These are up to four new teeth that erupt in the rear of the mouth as we approach our 20s. For some, they can pose little risk. But for many, these can lead to painful impactions, misalignment, infection, and other issues with the appearance, function, and health of your smile. Which is why we prefer to extract them before they erupt. We identify the position of these teeth with digital x-rays, and then we numb the smile before we carefully extract them with a pair of forceps. We suture the area closed and provide detailed aftercare to ensure a complication-free healing period. Our team could also extract teeth that are too damaged or decayed for treatment, or to make room for orthodontic treatment. Extraction also helps improve function and chewing capabilities in some patients.
Jawbone Grafting and Sinus Lifts
When we lose our teeth, the body stops sending doses of calcium and phosphorus to the jawbone around the missing roots. Without these nutrients, the bone tissue loses mass and density and begins to break down. This breakdown means further tooth loss and for some, a prematurely aged appearance. Once you see us for dental implant placement, you may not have enough jawbone to support new teeth. Fortunately, we can use oral surgery to repair the smile. Grafting involves adding new material to the weakened lower jaw, usually taken from the jaw or hip, or from synthetic sources. Sinus lifts involve raising the sinus floor to uncover new tissues. There is then enough structure to secure dental implants!
Facial Trauma
When you sustain serious facial trauma, including knocked out teeth, broken jaws, facial lacerations, or other serious injuries, we can rebuild the smile to improve oral health and bite function, and also the overall appearance of your smile. We have experience, as our surgeons are also members of the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Trauma Team. We usually start by replacing the missing teeth and securing a new framework around them, so we can improve overall facial structure in the process.
If you have any questions about our approach to oral surgery, or about any of these procedures in particular, then please don’t hesitate to reach out. We will also work alongside your general dentist and orthodontist, so treatment can continue seamlessly once you leave our office. We offer care for patients of all ages, and are ready to help your smile.
Do You Have Questions About Oral Surgery?
With oral surgery, we can help transform the function and beauty of your smile, so you can smile with confidence and enjoy optimal oral health too. If you would like to learn more about the various oral surgical treatments we use to improve your smile, then contact your Santa Rosa, CA, oral surgeons by calling 707-545-4625.
