Learn More About A Dental Surgeon
It’s quite obvious from the name itself that what a dental surgeon does when in relation to dentistry, however, if you’re like most people, you probably don’t know what procedures specifically are involved. No worries, because in this article, we’re going to list the specific dental procedures that can only be handled by a dental specialist.
Probably the most common of the dental procedures are those that involve the roots and the pulp of the teeth. These include root canal, pulpotomy or opening the pulp chamber to drain an infection, pulpectomy or removing the pulp from a tooth’s pulp chamber. Another common procedure related to the roots and pulp of the teeth is apicoectomy.
For people with severe oral diseases, sometimes doing the procedures mentioned above are not enough. There are times when a dental surgeon needs to do a root-end resection, which involves removing the apex of a tooth a surgically removing the diseased material.
Dental Surgeon Procedures
Fitting dental prosthetics (crowns or caps, veneers, bridges, implants and dentures) is also something that dental surgeons do. Those prosthetics, especially the dentures, need to be surgically fitted to a patient.
Aesthetics aside, however, dental surgeons actually do “real” dirty surgical work like apicoectomy or removing part of the bone structure.
A dental surgeon is really just a dentist who specializes in advanced dental procedures, although he may have gotten more advanced training.
If you’re like most people who has no lingering fear of the dentist’s chair, you probably think that dentists are only good for cleaning teeth and fitting dental prosthetics but as you can see from above, they are also qualified to perform surgical dental procedures.
Just like in any other branch of medicine, a doctor needs to determine if you need any of the procedures mentioned above before he performs it on you.
Another surgical dental procedure that is rather common is removing of impacted wisdom teeth. You might think it’s just simple teeth extraction but it’s not. It involves taking x-rays of your teeth and then slicing through the gum tissue to remove the impacted teeth.
Impacted teeth refers to teeth that are stuck between the jawbone and the gum tissue. Most cases of impacted teeth involve third molars or wisdom teeth and it’s usually because the jaw is not wide enough to accommodate the appearance of the teeth.
Most people usually only have one tooth removed, however, some people have it really bad and need to have all of their wisdom teeth removed. When this happens and all of the teeth need to be removed at the same time, you will need to have strong anesthesia.
Depending on the position of the tooth, a dentist could just pull it out whole or he might need to cut the tooth into smaller pieces so that it’s easier to remove. This is especially true for impacted tooth that’s stuck in a slanted or tilted position.
Anyway, here’s hoping you never need to have your wisdom teeth removed (because it’s usually not covered by insurance).
