Dry Socket after Tooth Extraction

The thought of going to a dentist to your have your tooth extracted can give you a sleepless night. Nowadays, it is not as harrowing experience, as it was in the past. The advances in the field of dentistry facilitates easy tooth extraction and to some extent, painless. Wait! You may still have to watch out for a dry socket after tooth extraction. You must be wondering, what is a dry socket after tooth extraction? I did too, honestly. I am a veteran of wisdom tooth extraction. The following brief note may shed some light on dry socket after tooth extraction and complications that may arise out of it.

What is Dry Socket After Tooth Extraction
A dry socket, also referred to as alveolar osteitis, is a complication related with tooth extractions. Normally, a blood clot forms in the empty socket after a tooth is extracted from it. A dry socket formation after tooth extraction involves a condition where the blood clot either isn't properly retained or hasn't developed. Such a condition may arise because of the blood clot getting dislodged or fibrinolysis, which is dissolution of a blood clot. Since this blood clot protects the boney tooth socket and initiates the healing process after tooth extraction, the healing of the now, empty tooth socket is interrupted and delayed.

Almost every tooth extraction causes discomfort and pain to the patient. This pain diminishes as time passes. However, the pain from the extraction site intensifies between three and five days, in case of a dry socket after the tooth extraction. Symptoms, such as foul odor emanating from the extraction site and moderate to severe pain, which radiates to the eye and or the ear, associated with the dry socket after tooth extraction, can be observed. Visual examination of the extraction site may reveal an empty and exposed socket bone, due to the absence of the blood clot. Because of this appearance of the socket, the condition has been named as "Dry socket after tooth extraction", which is associated with wisdom tooth extraction more often than not.

How to Prevent Dry Socket After Tooth Extraction
You can control some of the factors that can help you in preventing dry socket after tooth extraction. The following list contains the dentist's general instructions on, how to avoid a dry socket after a tooth extraction:

• After a tooth extraction, dentists advise their patients to exert a firm biting pressure on the gauze, placed over the site of extraction, for as long as the next 60 minutes.
• Normally, this will offer time and opportunity for the formation of a protective blood clot at the site of extraction, which is the intention of your dentist.
• It may take 24 hours or more, after a tooth extraction for the blood clot to get settled firmly.
• After, the blood clot is in place, the patient must take care not to disrupt and dislodge it.
• From your side you can do this by avoiding vigorous rinsing of your mouth for the first 24 hours.
• Actions, like sucking on a straw or cigarette can dislodge the blood clot by lowering the pressure around it, than the pressure in the cavity or space under it.
• Abstaining from alcohol and tobacco, exercises, and most importantly from drinking hot liquids, such as coffee or soup can help you in preventing a dry socket after tooth extraction.
• For dental patients with gum diseases such as peritonitis etc, your dentist may advise an antibiotic course for you to counter infection.
• Antibacterial mouthwash may help a patient, who is not a great dental hygienist, in countering the pre and or post operative bacterial growth near the site of the tooth extraction.
• Following diligently, the specific post-operative instructions deemed important by your dentist for you, may help you in avoiding or having to attend fewer post-operative complications, and in wisdom teeth removal recovery.

Treatment for Dry Socket After Tooth Extraction
It is difficult to harness and control the pain due to a dry socket after tooth extraction by using only analgesics as pain killers. Your dentist may clean the dry socket and apply dressing on it for you, whilst providing you with dry socket after tooth extraction treatment. The ingredients of the dry socket dressing may include, an extract of clove oil and or an anesthetic to dampen the pain. You may have to change the dressing regularly for 3 to 6 days. Mostly, you will have to wait it out while the healing process of the dry socket after tooth extraction is complete.

The extent of trauma associated with the tooth extraction may have an impact on whether you may develop a dry socket after tooth extraction or not. Greater the trauma, greater the chances of your having a dry socket after a tooth extraction. It is believed that women taking who take contraceptives are susceptible to form dry sockets due to more than the normal estrogen levels in their body. The other factors that may affect your chances of having a dry socket after a tooth extraction are age, location of tooth, type of tooth and how it is placed inside the gum bone. Dental care and dental health are important for everyone and that is why, it is advisable that you check with your insurance company for information on your dental insurance cover available for a dry socket after tooth extraction. It appears that dental patients, in their 20's have a lesser chance of developing a dry socket after a tooth extraction.