Your tooth is not the only thing you lose after tooth extraction. You should know that after a tooth extraction surgery, bone and gum tissue starts to shrink. Many people are not fully aware of the tooth removal consequences. However, sometimes there is no way for an emergency dentist rather than a tooth extraction. Bone loss after extracting your tooth is inevitable unless you consider some steps to prevent this prevalent problem. Dr. Behnam Bohlouli from Smile Point Dental, in an article submitted by faze.ca, claims that ridge preservation stages can minimize the alveolar bone shrinkage to a great extent after tooth removal.

The Reasons for Bone Loss after Tooth Extraction

Alveolar bone surrounds your teeth to hold and support them. It is worth knowing that bone loss can happen due to periodontal disease since bacterial toxins destroy the oral tissue such as the jaw bone and gum. However, bone loss occurs gradually after tooth extraction because there is no tooth it can hold and support. In this case, you lose your chewing pressure on the jawbone, leading to bone shrinkage.

Why Should You Prevent Bone Loss?

Bone loss should be prevented after tooth extraction because it will cause several dental emergencies and problems that require urgent dental care. The risk of other oral diseases will increase if you don’t care about bone loss after tooth extraction. The bone tissue around the extracted tooth starts to recede after a while. You should pay attention that the tooth next to the extracted one is in danger too. After gum receding, other surrounding teeth become loose and will need extraction without appropriate dental treatments. As a result, preventing bone loss is necessary if you want to have healthy gum and teeth.

Tooth extraction can also weaken your jaw bone so that it will easily break. This will happen, especially when you miss several teeth and not only one. In the event of several tooth loss, the jaw bone becomes both shorter and narrower. In this case, your bone becomes susceptible to break easily.

No dentist recommends tooth extraction as the primary treatment. However, tooth extraction surgeries are sometimes inevitable, and there is no other choice. If you had to undergo tooth extraction, it is better to think about a replacement method such as dental implants. Placing dental implants in the site of your extracted tooth makes your jaw bone get the required pressure and won’t shrink any more.

The process of tooth replacement should be done as soon as possible. The root is the most critical part of the tooth to be replaced immediately, and dental implants are the best option in this regard. Removable dentures and bridges are other tooth-replacement methods. However, they cannot significantly prevent bone loss as they cannot replace the tooth root. This explains why bone loss is so common among those who use full or partial removable dentures. A dentist can detect the changes your bone and gum will bear after tooth extraction.