Your child should eat soft foods for the first few days after tooth extraction.
Dr. Konz will examine your child’s mouth and take x-rays of their teeth to get a close look at decay, damaged dental pulp, or oral trauma, and determine if the tooth can be saved or must be removed.
Before beginning to work on your child’s tooth, we will administer a local anesthetic to numb their mouth so they do not feel any pain.
A dental appliance called an elevator is used to rock the tooth back and forth which severs the ligament holding it in place.
After the tooth has been loosened from the socket, our Ashburn team will use forceps to get a firm hold of the tooth and remove it from the socket.
If there are any residual bumps or uneven surfaces, these will be smoothed out. The socket will be cleaned and compressed and if sutures are needed, the socket may be stitched shut.
Your child should avoid all forms of suction after having a tooth extracted.
Getting a tooth pulled is completely painless! We administer a local anesthetic that numbs your mouth before we do any loosening of the tooth from its socket. We also sever the nerves responsible for sensation in your tooth at the start of the extraction.
While you may experience some lingering soreness in the coming days once the anesthetic has worn off, this should be relatively mild and relieved with prescribed or over-the-counter pain medication. The most important part of your recovery is to avoid dislodging your blood clots at the extraction site because this can cause a painful condition known as a dry socket.
If your child has lost a baby tooth, it will not need to be replaced because a permanent tooth is still going to erupt in its place. However, for this eruption to occur properly, a space maintainer may need to be installed in the mouth to prevent surrounding teeth from shifting and blocking the space where the permanent tooth will erupt.
If a child loses a permanent tooth, they may also need a space maintainer until their jaw has fully developed, and then it can be replaced with a dental implant, bridge, or partial denture. If the tooth has been knocked out, we may be able to reattach it with a splint.
A space maintainer is a stainless steel oral appliance that can be removable or fixed in the mouth. In most cases, the space maintainer will be fixed so the patient cannot remove it themselves.
There are different types of space maintainers but they work by wrapping around a tooth or teeth that are adjacent to the gap in your smile and a wire holds the space open until it is time for the permanent tooth to erupt. The space maintainer can then be removed and the permanent tooth will erupt normally.
If a baby tooth is being extracted at our Ashburn office, this typically heals within 1-2 days, while permanent teeth take a few days to heal. Within about a week, the pain, bleeding, and swelling should have subsided and the hole should be closed within 14 days. However, it can take up to 3 weeks for the soft tissue in your mouth to no longer feel tender.
The swelling will subside completely within about 10 days.
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