When you have teeth that need extraction, or if you need jawbone grafting to prepare your smile for dental implants, then you need oral surgery. Our team has the skills and experience to help our patients with these complex issues. In today’s blog, your Cerritos, CA, dentist talks about our approach to oral surgery.
Starting with a Consultation
If you have a serious oral health concern, one that causes pain and impacts the overall quality of your life, then you should contact us to schedule a consultation. We will discuss your symptoms and your experience, and then we will carefully examine your smile with digital x-rays and intraoral cameras. We then make a diagnosis with precision and accuracy, so we can plan your treatment in detail and start you on a journey to a stronger and healthier smile. Our team will choose which oral surgical procedure is the best to improve your smile. To keep the procedure comfortable, we can use local anesthesia and even dental sedation as part of your oral surgery experience, so you remain comfortable and relaxed throughout the procedure, with little to no memory afterward.
Tooth Extraction
A common form of oral surgery is tooth extraction. Sometimes issues arise that cannot be treated with a restoration. Instead, we need to protect the smile by removing the teeth in question. For example, we can take out wisdom teeth before they erupt, protecting your smile from impaction, infection, and dental misalignment. We can take out teeth too damaged, decayed, or infected to be restored. This prevents infection from reaching other parts of your smile. Our team could also take out teeth to make room for orthodontic treatment, or to help with chewing capabilities and bite balance. The process often takes as little as 30 minutes!
Jawbone Grafting
If you’ve lost jawbone mass and density due to untreated tooth loss, we can help with oral surgery. Following tooth loss, our smile loses mass and density, which can lead to further tooth loss and an aged appearance. This could also complicate the ability to replace missing teeth with a dental implant. But with jawbone grafting, we restore these weakened areas using tissue taken from your hips, jaw, or knee, or from donor or synthetic sources. Once we rebuild these portions of the jaw, we will move forward with implant dentistry, which helps prevent further loss of mass and density in the smile. For the upper jaw, we could also help with a sinus lift, which raises the sinus floor to uncover new tissues that can support one or more dental implants.
Gum Grafts
When you have serious gum disease, including periodontitis, this could lead to major gum recession. These receding tissues make your teeth appear long, and exposes sensitive root portions, so decay and infection, as well as the risk of tooth loss, increases. But with gum grafts, we can remove diseased tissue and add new ones to cover the exposed tooth roots and improve the overall beauty of your smile too. Moving forward, we can discuss care to help manage the disease and keep your smile whole and beautiful. With oral surgery, we can help you maintain your best smile, even in the face of a serious disease.
Dental Implant Placement
Our team can also use oral surgery to address tooth loss, replacing one or more missing teeth with dental implants, or with implant-secured prosthetics. This provides tooth replacement that can last for decades to come, or possible an entire lifetime! This also prevents the loss of mass and density in the jaw, which means they not only last for a long time, but that they never slip when you eat or speak, and offer a lifelike appearance and function too.
If you have any questions about how we use oral surgery to improve the health, function, and beauty of your smile, then contact our team today to learn more. We want to make sure you and your family enjoy optimal oral health and a stunning smile this summer!
SPEAK WITH YOUR CERRITOS, CA, DENTIST ABOUT ORAL SURGERY
We can handle serious and complex concerns with oral surgery, whether you need a gentle tooth extraction or replacement with one or more dental implants. Don’t live with poor oral health and unsightly cosmetic concerns. We can help transform your smile! To learn more about our approach to oral surgery, contact your Cerritos, CA, dentist at 562-584-4082. We serve patients from all surrounding communities, such as Lakewood, Long Beach, and Buena Park.
