707-566-7300 
During the extraction of your wisdom teeth in Santa Rosa, California, we will manage your pain with local anesthesia, laughing gas (nitrous oxide) or IV sedation. And after the teeth have been taken out, our oral surgeons, Dr. Jiries Mogannam, Dr. Vicente Chavez or Dr. Christopher Chow will place gauze pads in your mouth in order to help manage any bleeding. We will supervise your condition until you leave our office and are taken home. When you are discharged, we will provide you with a homecare kit that will include instruction for how to care for yourself after your wisdom teeth removal. Please contact Sonoma County Oral Surgery & Dental Implant Center at 707-566-7300 if you have any questions or concerns.
How Will I feel After My Wisdom Teeth Are Removed?
During the first day after your procedure, you will likely experience minor bleeding and pain. The reaction to surgery varies from person to person. The sensation of pain that you may experience can range from mildly uncomfortable to severely painful. The amount of swelling you may experience will also vary, but most of the time it will reach its peak during the during the third day after your surgery and then begin to go down during the fourth day. In order to manage the amount of swelling that you experience, we recommend using ice during the first the day after your procedure. The more you use ice on the first day, then the less swelling you will experience on the second day. We recommend using the 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off method. Also, please do not put the ice directly on your skin.
Once you reach the third day, you will likely notice that the muscles in your jaw are stiff and it has become difficult to open your mouth. You can treat this condition by applying moist heat to your face. You may also want to limit the amount of physical activity that you perform for a few days. Please follow the post-operative instructions that we will provide for you in order to ensure the most comfortable recovery possible. Most of our patients feel like they are on their way to being recovered after three to five days.
Are Their Any Complications Related to Wisdom Tooth Removal?
Dr. Jiries Mogannam and Dr. Vicente Chavez do everything they can in order to ensure that your wisdom tooth removal goes as safely and comfortable as possible, unfortunately because it is a medical procedure, there is a chance that of a complication occurring. These possible complications can include delayed healing, infection and post-operative numbness or tingling sensations in you lips, chin or tongue. Please contact us at 707-566-7300 with any questions you have if you are experiencing the following:
Damage to Sensory Nerve
The nerve that supplies feeling to the lower lip, chin and tongue is in the lower jawbone and is frequently close to the roots of your lower wisdom teeth. When patients get their wisdom teeth out between the ages of 12 and 18 then the roots of the teeth tend to be shorter which means that they are not so close to this nerve. Older patients are at a great risk that the nerve can be injured during their wisdom teeth removal procedure. Once your anesthesia wears off, there is a chance that you may feel a tingling or numbing sensation in your lower lip, chin or tongue. If this occurs, it is typically a temporary condition and it will resolve gradually after a few weeks or months. There is a very rare chance that your sensations are permanently altered due to receiving local anesthetic.
Sinus Communication
Upper wisdom teeth tend to come in very close to your sinuses. When they are removed, there is a chance that it can create an opening between your mouth and your sinus cavity. The chance of this occurring is significantly reduced when your wisdom teeth are removed at an early age because the roots have not had much time to form. When this condition does occur, it tends to happen very spontaneously. We may give you special instructions including to avoid blowing your nose for the next two or three days. It is okay if you wipe your nose, but if you need to sneeze then you should do so with an open mouth into a tissue. This should avoid creating any pressure inside of the sinus cavity and should prevent the healing blood clot from being dislodged. Please contact us if you sense that this complication may be occurring after your surgery. It is rare, but we may need to perform an additional to close the opening.
Dry Sockets
One of the most common complications that occur after a patient has undergone dental surgery. This condition occurs when you lose the blood clot from an empty tooth socket before it has healed. Dry sockets tend to occur more often with patients who have a history of smoking or who are taking birth control pills. Either jaw can be affected by dry socket but typically it will occur in the lower jaw between the third and fifth day. Symptoms typically include a deep, dull and continuous ache on the affected sides. One of the first things that you may notice is a pain beginning in your ear and radiating down toward your chin.
Often people begin to experience this pain in the middle of the night, and unfortunately, your regular pain medications may not help with it. Applying a medical dressing into the empty tooth socket may help with the pain and it will protect the socket from being plugged with food particles. Typically, this helps to manage pain for 24 to 48 hours and then you may need to change the dressing. The medical dressings will be removed after you have been two to three days pain free.
This dressing does not assist with the healing process, it is only there to help manage your pain. If your pain is being managed well enough with the dressing, then there is no need to apply it. After the dressing is removed, you may be provided with an irrigation device in order to clean food particles from the extraction site.
Infection
In order to treat a post-operative infection, you will need to visit our office for an examination. Most of the time, simply placing you on an antibiotic for one week will clear up the infection. If it does not clean up the infection, then the infected area will have to be drained and cleaned.
Some of the other temporary conditions that can occur after you have had your wisdom teeth removed include stiffness of the jaws, chafing around the corners of your lips, facial bruising and blood oozing from the extraction sites.
