Hi, I’m Dr. Brett Langston. I’m a prosthodontist and owner of Dental Implant and Aesthetic Specialists here in Brookhaven, Georgia. And I’m Dr. Rachel Miro, a dentist here at Dental Implant and Aesthetic Specialists.
Defining Oral Surgery
Alright, so today we’re here to talk about oral surgery and some of the biggest myths and misconceptions that come along with surgery in your mouth. So before we get started, let’s define oral surgery. Dr. Miro, how would you describe the oral surgery procedures we do in our office?
Here in our office, we do a lot of oral surgery procedures, extractions, implants, bone grafts, sinus lifts, and all things involved.
Myth 1: Oral Surgery Always Leads to Complications
The first myth we come across is that there are all these complications, and oral surgery and having surgery in your mouth are big deals. It always ends up with complications and problems and pain, and you hear these horror stories, so are they as common as people are concerned about?
Even though oral surgery complications can arise, they’re not that common, and we do many things here at Dental Implant and Aesthetic Specialists to prevent complications from arising. A lot of these things come from the start when you’re treatment planning, making sure everything’s nice and organized, taking a patient’s medical history, and making sure that there’s nothing that would increase their chances of having a complication. With all that being said, it’s pretty rare to see complications arise when you do all the previous steps.
So, what are some of the reasons that we don’t experience a lot of complications in our practice?
I think a lot of the reasons why we minimize the complications we have in our office is because we do everything ahead of time. We make sure we know our patients, we make sure that we’re doing everything in their best interest and we really take the time on the front end so that these complications don’t arise.
Yeah, it reminds me of a saying that one of my instructors used to say: proper planning prevents poor performance. You might have different versions, but that’s a big thing for our practice is that as long as you have a good medical history, you have a great plan going into it, you know what you’re going to do, you know how the patient’s going to react, how their body’s going to react. It eliminates a lot of the possibilities for those complications and negative outcomes.
Myth 2: Oral Surgery is Painful
Myth number two, oral surgery is painful. You hear horror stories. You hear, oh my goodness, I have to have a tooth pulled. It’s going to be the worst thing in the world. I’m going to book off the rest of the month so I can just recover in my bed. Let’s elaborate a little bit on how we can minimize the possibility of these negative painful outcomes from oral surgery in our practice.
In many of the things that we do here, we make sure that we use proper local anesthetics so that the patients don’t have pain. We offer things like EXPAREL, so the patient doesn’t feel anything in the area for two to three days, just to minimize that pain. We offer IV sedation so that during the procedure they don’t have anxiety, they’re relaxed, they can’t feel anything.
So in addition to the planning and obviously making sure you’re comfortable, making sure you’re numb, making sure you don’t feel anything like Dr. Miro was saying, it’s pretty cool some of the technology and some of the advances we have to enable your recovery to be much better than it used to be. As far as minimal soreness, minimal discomfort, we’ve got different techniques and medicines we can use to help the recovery go smoother.
When performing surgery in our office, we make sure that the patient is nice and comfortable, whether that is before we get started, making sure they can’t feel anything, offering them a warm blanket, offering them a squeeze bump. We do whatever it takes to make sure that you are comfortable throughout the entire procedure.
Myth 3: Sedation Used in Oral Surgery is Dangerous
Another myth that people have about oral surgery is the sedation that we use to help make that procedure go smoother is dangerous. People are concerned they may not wake up. Can we address that a little bit?
Overall, IV sedation is really safe. Doctors that do IV sedation usually have extra training and certifications. Their offices are properly set up to monitor these patients to assure that the risks of any complications are really low. Here in our office, we monitor heart rate, we monitor blood pressure, we properly dose our patients, and even though sedation is scary, you’re still conscious during sedation, so you are able to communicate with your doctor.
So the sedation is different than hospital sedation, where you’re knocked out, and you hear the stories of I was awake during the procedure or people having a hard time waking up. It sounds like our sedation is a lot lighter.
Usually, what our sedation does is it really reduces your anxiety and causes amnesia so you don’t remember how long you were in the chair. Usually, a two-hour procedure will feel like 10 minutes. For the state of Georgia, in order to perform IV sedation, we have to get extra accreditation to our office and actually have somebody from the board come out, look at our office, and make sure that we’re properly equipped to treat our patients for IV sedation.
Myth 4: Any Dentist Can Perform Oral Surgery
Another myth we can hear is that any dentist can do any oral surgery, and that’s unfortunately not true. While it is true that all dentists go through a four-year program to get exposure and experience in all aspects of dentistry after they graduate from dental school, if you want to pursue different aspects of dentistry, whether for me it was prosthodontics, I wanted to focus on restoring teeth. I wanted to focus on complicated restorations. Dr. Miro did a residency after her dental school that allowed her to get the education and the experience in these oral surgery procedures that allows us to confidently provide that in our office.
After dental school, I completed a general practice residency that was highly focused on implant surgery and IV sedation. That extra training gave me the proper experience and skills to be able to go out and treat our patients from a surgical aspect.
Myth 5: Recovering from Oral Surgery is Painful and Long
Another common myth we hear is recovering from oral surgery is painful. It drags out, and you’re going to be out of commission for a week or a month. Is that true?
Even though recovery is variable for all patients, we do a lot of things to minimize how much discomfort the patients are in after they leave our office. During the procedure, we make sure that we’re very careful, we’re gentle with the area, we make sure that the patients are properly anesthetized, and all of this plays a big factor in the patient’s recovery after these procedures. We also make ourselves available to our patients after surgery. So if they have any questions, they’re free to give us a call, and we’ll be happy to help in any way that we can.
One big thing that we pride ourselves on in our practice is informing patients and educating them. Knowing what’s going to happen and being prepared for it makes the whole process go a lot smoother. And like Dr. Miro mentioned, we’re both available to our patients. So after a big procedure, you’re not going to feel abandoned. You’re not going to feel left to kind of fend on your own. So if you get home and you have questions about it: “Can I eat this? Can I eat that? This is a little sore. Is this normal?” I can’t tell you how many pictures I have of patients taking pictures in their mouths and screenshotting and texting them to us just so we can let them know and give them peace of mind that everything’s okay. So one of the really cool advantages of living in the digital technology age is that even if you’re traveling to us from a distance, you don’t necessarily have to be in person if you need us to take a look at something, and check up on you. So we love taking care of our patients, and we’re always available to help you in any way we can.
Conclusion
I’m Dr. Rachel Miro and if you think you might need dental surgery, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. And I’m Dr. Brett Langston. I’m here to help you watch your mouth.