Vista Dental

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Reasons for Tooth Extractions

We regularly extract teeth at Vista Dental in Medicine Hat, but we always give the decision to extract serious consideration. There are a few reasons why we might recommend it, and we thought it would be helpful to patients who are nervous if they understood what those are.


The teeth that are most often extracted are wisdom teeth and premolars. Modern people’s mouths often don’t have room for all their teeth. When kids are being prepared for orthodontic correction, it is common for a set of premolars to be removed so that the remaining teeth will be able to form a perfectly-aligned arch. Wisdom teeth often do not emerge until late in adolescence, after the window for major orthodontic correction has closed. They are especially likely to get stuck and to push other teeth out of alignment while causing soreness and creating a difficult-to-clean home for bacteria.


Adult teeth can also become impacted if the baby teeth ahead of them don’t fall out. Even when they are able to emerge, the overcrowding and awkward positioning of the baby teeth will create a trap for sugar. Occasionally, a tooth might be too infected or cracked to be saved. This has gotten rarer as root canal techniques have improved, but it can happen, and the surrounding gum tissue may be too weak to support a tooth. However, dental roots help to stabilize the jaw bone, so we would usually try to restore a broken crown.


Vista Dental is located at 7 Strachan Bay SE, Medicine Hat, Alberta, T1B 4Y2, Canada. To schedule an appointment, call 403-548-7077 or visit Vista Dental MH.