All Smiles Family Dentistry strives to ensure our oral surgery services — including teeth extractions, bone grafting, and dental implant placement — are as relaxing and comfortable as can be.
Sometimes, a tooth is too damaged or decayed to be restored. In this case, removing—or “extracting”—the tooth is usually recommended. In this procedure, the tooth in question is carefully removed using specialized instruments and techniques. All Smiles Family Dentistry takes the utmost care to ensure our patients are as comfortable as possible during their procedure.
We also provide wisdom tooth extractions for patients with wisdom teeth that interfere with the maintenance of their oral health. These “third molars” are for most people the last teeth to form and erupt—usually appearing in a person’s late teens or early twenties—and are the farthest back in the mouth. The American Dental Association estimates well over 50 percent of Americans get or should get their wisdom teeth extracted, most often due to the mouth not having enough room for the wisdom teeth to come in properly. In most cases where wisdom teeth are prevented from erupting as they should by the jawbone or another tooth, All Smiles Family Dentistry refers patients to area oral surgery experts to have these teeth removed.
Safe and effective local anesthesia is used for all extractions, but All Smiles Family Dentistry also offers sedation that ranges from nitrous oxide and oral medication, to I.V. sedation by partnering with the board-certified anesthesiologists at Illinois Anesthesia. Click here to read more about our sedation services!
A bone graft is a special material that supports a patient’s natural bone growth that is placed in the socket left over after a tooth is extracted. Bone grafting is best done immediately after a tooth is taken out to aid in proper healing, and is most often recommended when a patient wants to replace an extracted tooth with a dental implant in the future. Some teeth are better candidates to be replaced by dental implants than others; All Smiles Family Dentistry makes sure to offer bone grafting to patients whenever appropriate to their situation.
The bone graft material we use is composed of the same calcium-based compounds that make up bone and teeth. Placement of this graft after an extraction takes mere minutes, and allows the body to use these compounds to rebuild its natural bone structure more easily and quickly than it would on its own. For most patients, the graft material is completely replaced by natural bone in a just a few months.
A dental implant is an artificial substitute for the roots of a missing natural tooth. An implant acts as an anchor for an artificial replacement tooth and eliminates the instability associated with surface adhesives and removable bridges. It may be used to support a single crown, a series of crowns, a removable partial denture, or a complete denture.
The placement of dental implants is a two-phase procedure. During the first phase, the implant body is surgically placed into the jawbone. This small device makes up the foundation needed to securely hold the crown or denture. For the first three to six months following surgery, the implant is beneath the surface of the gums, gradually bonding with the jawbone.
Once the implant has bonded, the second phase begins: a small post, which secures the crown or denture to the implant body, is attached to the implant. At the same time, the crown or denture is attached to the post. Implants are generally very strong and easily withstand the day-to-day pressure of chewing and speaking.