Significant improvements in dentistry have altered the landscape for wisdom tooth extractions. At Delaware Dental Studio, we can now remove wisdom teeth in a comfortable and pain-free manner.
Human jaws have become smaller throughout our evolutionary history. Many anthropologists believe wisdom teeth assisted early humans with their diet of coarse, rough food, such as nuts, roots, and meats. With technological advances in agriculture and our civilization, many evolutionary biologists now classify wisdom teeth as vestigial structures – a body part that has become largely functionless due to evolution and human advancement.
Most people only have room for 28 teeth in their mouth. When wisdom teeth appear between the ages of 17 and 25, it adds up to another 4 teeth in your mouth for a total of 32. Because the human jaw is often too small to house these extra teeth, complications can arise, including bite misalignment, headaches, bacterial infection, and severe damage to adjacent teeth. If there is insufficient room in your mouth, Dr. Lynn Fee, your Wilmington dentist at Delaware Dental Studio, recommends removal of your wisdom teeth before you experience pain in your wisdom teeth to prevent more serious complications.
Unless you have enough room in your mouth for your wisdom teeth to fully erupt, which is uncommon, many problems can arise by not removing them. Indeed, according to the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, an estimated 85% of wisdom teeth eventually must be removed. Some of the problems that you may experience by not removing your wisdom teeth include, among others:
Some of the common signs that your wisdom teeth are erupting include swelling, pain in the back of the mouth, bad taste, and in severe cases, difficulties opening your jaw. You should not wait, however, to experience these symptoms before having your wisdom teeth evaluated.
Even if your wisdom teeth are not causing you pain, you should have them examined. By the time pain is present, irreversible damage may already exist because an infection may have already spread to adjacent teeth and gum tissue – principal contributors to periodontal disease. At Delaware Dental Studio, unless your mouth can accommodate your wisdom teeth, our Wilmington dentists recommend removal of your wisdom teeth prior to experiencing wisdom tooth pain.
At Delaware Dental Studio, wisdom teeth removal is an in-office procedure that has been performed on the vast majority of our Wilmington patients. If Dr. Lynn Fee determines you need your wisdom teeth extracted, she will discuss the procedure with you and various oral sedation options to ensure your comfort during the procedure. With her extensive wisdom tooth extraction experience, she can often remove all four wisdom teeth in less than one hour.
On the day of your wisdom tooth dental procedure, many Wilmington patients choose to take medication prescribed by Dr. Lynn Fee a few hours before to help reduce anxiety. Once you arrive at Delaware Dental Studio, our team will make sure you are comfortable. After Dr. Lynn Fee applies local anesthetic, she will then gently remove your wisdom teeth and suture the extraction site with dissolvable stitches. Recent advances in medicine and technology allow our Wilmington patients to have their wisdom teeth removed in a manner that promotes rapid healing with minimal postoperative pain and discomfort.
After the procedure, we will provide you with detailed, written and oral instructions on how to care for yourself and prescribe pain medication and anti-inflammatories. We recommend trying non-narcotic anti-inflammatory medication, such as ibuprofen first, to see if that adequately treats your pain. The day of the surgery, you should rest and limit your diet to soft foods. The recovery period after removal of your wisdom teeth normally lasts only a couple of days.
At Delaware Dental Studio, we offer wisdom teeth removal for patients of all ages. Our Wilmington dentist, Dr. Lynn Fee, is an expert at extracting teeth. Before opening Delaware Dental Studio, she spent many years at an emergency dental clinic where she removed thousands of teeth – sometimes upwards of fifty per day!
At Delaware Dental Studio, our Wilmington patients can receive a range of oral sedation dentistry options and are made as comfortable as possible to make the process easy and pain free. To schedule an appointment, please contact us at (302) 475-0600, or drop by our office at 2500 Grubb Rd, Suite 130, Wilmington, DE 19810. We’re always accepting new patients, and we hope to see you soon.
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