The term wisdom teeth refer to the permanent teeth in adults at the mouth’s back corner in both the upper and lower jaws. There are four such teeth, and dentists remove them through a surgical extraction. One of the primary reasons behind the sensations of pain and other types of dental disorders like an infection in the wisdom tooth is a lack of room for the tooth’s growth. If this happens to you, you may have to extract them with help from a suitable and professional dentist like Dental Be. Some dentists recommend that you extract these teeth even if they are impacted and can’t grow but are not causing any problems. It helps to prevent any issues that might potentially arise in the future.
What To Expect After The Procedure
If you are given general anaesthesia or sedation anaesthesia for the extraction procedure, you are likely to be guided to a recovery room once the surgery is over. Your recovery time will be relatively brief and spent in the dental chair if the doctor thought that local anaesthesia would work just fine for you. You will heal better and faster if you observe these instructions of the dentist:
1. Beverages
You must drink lots of water once the dental surgery is complete. Remember to avoid beverages with alcohol or caffeine or even hot beverages or carbonated drinks in the twenty-four hours that immediately follow your wisdom teeth extraction. Another thing you must observe is to avoid drinking from straws for the week following the procedure. The sucking action can potentially upset the blood clot, and you need to prevent it.
2. Bleeding
Expect to experience a little bit of bleeding on an immediate day following the wisdom tooth extraction. You should be careful not to spit during this period as it might result in dislodging the blood clot from the tooth’s socket. Also, follow the dentist’s instructions for replacing gauze placed in the extracted tooth.
3. Pain Management
For the typical wisdom tooth extraction, over-the-counter painkillers should work fine. Often the dentist will prescribe pain management medication, which might be especially needed in procedures involving the removal of bones. Another common and easily accessible way to relieve the pain is by holding a cold pack against your jaws.
4. Swelling and Bruising
To cope with the swelling, you might need to use ice packs as per the dentists’ directions. The swelling of the cheeks resulting from the tooth extraction gets better typically in two to three days. However, the bruising might take relatively longer to go away.
5. Activity
Make it a point to schedule no activities for the day when the extraction will be done. While you can resume everyday life from the following day, it is important to avoid activities that might strain you too much. It can upset the tooth socket blood clot.
6. Food
Consider the food you eat after undergoing wisdom tooth extraction carefully. For the initial 24 hours, keep in mind to eat only soft foods like applesauce and yoghurt. When you can resume eating semi-soft food, you can do so. However, try to avoid hard foods or spicy and hot foods as they might aggravate the wound or get stuck in the socket.
7. Clean Your Mouth
In the immediate twenty-four hours that follow surgery, try to avoid brushing your teeth or using mouthwash or spit or rinse your mouth in any way. Usually, you can resume routine brushing after one day has passed. Remember that you need to be incredibly gentle with your brush in the region around the surgical wound. Another thing to practice is to gently rinse your mouth with salt water after every two or three hours for a week or after having a meal.
8. Tobacco Use
If you are a smoker, it is essential to abstain from it in at least the 72 hours that follow a wisdom tooth extraction, if possible, for longer. People who consume tobacco by chewing need to refrain from the activity for at least a week. Tobacco can work to hinder the healing process of the body and work to increase possible complications in the procedure, so stay away from it.
9. Stitches
If you indeed have stitches, they are likely to dissolve in a matter of a few weeks. In some cases, you might need to have these stitches removed, and you should accordingly schedule an appointment for the same.
10. Sore Jaw
Another common thing you can expect after a wisdom tooth removal is a sore jaw. Use moist heat to get over the discomfort caused by it or at least make it bearable.
Taking Care Of Yourself After The Procedure
The first thing to do in the healing time following the removal of wisdom teeth is to keep the wound clean. You will still need to continue eating and drinking, and it is common to have some of the food to get stuck in the tooth socket, which will make the process of keeping your mouth clean harder. The following tips should help you in ensuring a speedy recovery. Besides keeping things clean, you also need to:
- Make use of antiseptic rinses after the procedure. This will help to prevent infection in the wound area.
- Rinse your mouth regularly with salted water, which will help in reducing swelling and give relief to sore gums.
- Keep your head raised when you go to sleep for better comfort.
- Besides pain, people who have undergone the procedure are likely to feel tired too. Keep in mind to schedule your exercises accordingly. It would do little harm to skip them for a few days immediately after the dental surgery.
Foods You Can Expect To Eat
You need to stick to liquid or soft food in the days that immediately follow the dental extraction. It will help prevent damage to the surgical wound resulting from it. The most typical examples are as follows:
- Jello
- Soup
- Eggs
- Soft noodles
- Mashed bananas
Try your best to avoid food that involves many or even moderate amounts of chewing after removing your wisdom tooth. Things like chewing gums and sticky candy often get stuck and may further damage the wound and result in much discomfort and pain. Avoid taking hard and crunchy foods too, besides those with too many spices.
Once you remove your wisdom teeth, the recovery time is determined mainly by how difficult it was to extract the tooth. This, in other words, refers to whether the extraction was a simple procedure involving a wholly erupted tooth, or was it complicated by the tooth being impacted in the jawbone of the patient. But the aspects of the removal we mention in this article are generally what you can expect. Hopefully, it helps, and here’s wishing you a fast recovery!
