If we’re doing surgery on someone, it’s typically because they’ve got a tooth that’s not savable. If the decay has eaten so much of the tooth away, destroyed so much of the tooth that it’s down to the bone, can’t be saved. Or if it’s decayed into…between the roots where the roots are not connected anymore, can’t be saved. It’s in the nerves, and they can’t afford a root canal, then the only other option is to pull the tooth.
You don’t wanna leave the infection because it will fester, it will not go away. You can’t just take antibiotics and get rid of an abscess. An antibiotic will temporarily, while you’re on the antibiotic, it’ll temporarily get you out of pain, but it won’t get rid of the cause. It will come back as soon as you get off of it. And you can’t be on antibiotics for the rest of your life, so you’ve gotta take care of it. People have died from abscess teeth, and even these days. So it’s not something to leave.
So we do our best to get the teeth out as painless as possible. Numb you, the happy gas, every way there is that if we can catch…if we are going to have to take a tooth out, it’s better to take it out when there’s structure there to get a hold of rather than letting it decay off down to the gum, and then you’ve got nothing to push against, nothing to get that root out. There’s still a root. It looks to you like there’s no tooth there, but only a fourth of the tooth is gone. If the crown is gone, the rest of the root is still there, and you’re still gonna have infection, you’re still gonna have problems, it still needs to come out, and now, it’s much harder to get out. So now, it’s cutting it out. So you gotta get down to something solid to be able to pry against and pull it out of there. It’s much easier. Don’t wait until the last minute. If you’re having a toothache, get it seen as soon as possible. We can hopefully save the tooth. If not, then we’ll take it out. It’ll be a lot easier on you earlier than later.