By practicing good hygiene every day and visiting your dentist regularly, you can preserve your natural, beautiful smile for life. Sometimes, however, prevention isn’t enough, and you may require cosmetic or restorative care to improve your smile’s appearance or address a progressive dental health issue. In serious cases, tooth extraction might be necessary to help your smile recover from dental disease, injury, or an impacted molar (wisdom tooth). By removing a tooth that can’t be restored, your dentist can help you avoid more serious complications from developing later.
Reasons for Tooth Extraction
Ideally, preserving all of your healthy, natural tooth structure is the main goal of maintaining good hygiene and dental health. However, common conditions that could require tooth extraction include:
- Severely damaged teeth that cannot be restored, such as a fracture that extends below the gum line (vertical root fracture) or a cracked tooth root. Such damage can cause trauma to nearby soft tissues and leave your gums more vulnerable to gum disease.
- Wisdom teeth, or third molars, that have become impacted within the jawbone or by nearby second molars. Such an impaction can lead to increasingly severe dental pain, tooth damage, tooth misalignment, and a heightened risk of dental infection.
- Teeth that lack periodontal (gums) and alveolar (jawbone) support due to severe gum disease. If the supportive structures around a tooth are too weak because of gum disease, then the tooth will grow loose and fall out, making it more difficult to restore your smile.
Ask Your Dentist About Tooth Extraction
If tooth extraction becomes necessary, then speak with your dentist about how to protect your smile afterward. To schedule an appointment, call Cedar Dental in Cedar Rapids, IA, today at (319) 364-7108.
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