Severe pain may develop several days after a tooth has been extracted if a blood clot that forms in the socket becomes dislodged. The condition, commonly called dry socket, can involve infection of the alveolar bone that normally surrounds root of the tooth; loss of the clot can expose the bone tissue to the environment organisms that produce an inflammation of the bone tissue. Dry socket may be treated by irrigating the socket with warm salt water and packing it with strips of medicated gauze. The patient also is given analgesics, sedatives and other medications as needed to control the pain and gum infection. General anesthetics are sometime necessary for complicated periodontal surgery. In such cases, there are available dental offices or clinics that are well equipped and staffed as hospital operating rooms.
Tooth extraction because of caries is less common today than in previous years, although an estimated 25 million Americans have had all of their teeth removed. Modern preventive dentistry techniques now make it possible to save many teeth that would have been extracted in the past decades after the spread of decay into the pulp canal, or have been damaged by periodontal disease.
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