Go Back

Oral Surgery

Procedures such as tooth extractions and interventions in the soft tissues and jawbone, necessary for teeth that cannot be treated, preventing the spread of disease.

1 / 1

Oral surgery is a field of dentistry that deals with surgical procedures in the oral cavity and jaws. These interventions are most often applied when other, less invasive methods cannot solve the problem.

Surgical procedures in the oral cavity are not rare – although they cause concern in many patients, most procedures are routine, performed under local anesthesia, and with proper preparation and postoperative care, they pass without complications.

When Is Oral Surgery Necessary?

Some of the most common reasons why a patient is referred for oral surgery include:

  • Tooth extraction: An intervention that is approached only when it is not possible to preserve the tooth by any available dental intervention, or when its retention may pose a risk to the patient's health. Also, often as part of preparing patients for orthodontics.

  • Surgical tooth extraction: If a tooth has not fully erupted, if it is broken below the gums, when roots are curved, multiple, or fused with the surrounding bone, or if the tooth is surrounded by dense bone that makes extraction difficult, or a previous attempt at standard extraction was unsuccessful, extraction requires a surgical approach.

  • Extraction of impacted and semi-impacted teeth: Teeth that have not fully erupted (most often wisdom teeth) or have grown at a bad angle can cause pain, infections, damage to adjacent teeth, or orthodontic problems. Surgical extraction is then necessary.

  • Periapical lesions: When an infection at the root tip of a tooth cannot be resolved by standard root canal treatment (endodontics), an apicoectomy is performed – removal of the root tip and surrounding diseased tissue.

  • Cysts and other changes: Cysts in the jawbone can grow without symptoms but lead to tooth displacement, tooth loss, or bone damage. Treatment of such pathological changes is exclusively by a surgical procedure called cystectomy.

  • Preparation for prosthetic or implantological work: Sometimes, before prosthetic or implantological therapy, it is necessary to perform additional interventions: remove obstructive bone protrusions (alveoplasty), correct the ridge shape, insert additional bone (augmentation), lift the sinus membrane (sinus lift) to obtain sufficient bone height for an implant.

  • Frenulectomy: An excessively long frenulum under the tongue (lingual frenulum) or above the upper lip can interfere with speech, chewing, or tooth position, especially in children – correction is performed by a simple surgical procedure.

What Does the Procedure Look Like?

Most oral surgery procedures are performed under local anesthesia and last between 20 and 60 minutes, depending on complexity. The patient does not feel pain, only pressure during the intervention.

After the procedure, detailed recovery instructions are provided – how to care for the wound, which medications to take (usually antibiotics and analgesics), and what to avoid in the coming days (such as smoking, physical exertion, and consuming hot food).

Is There a Risk?

As with any surgical intervention, there may be complications – the most common are:

  • Dry socket (alveolitis) – more common in smokers, occurs 2–3 days after tooth extraction with intense pain and bad breath
  • Prolonged bleeding
  • Wound infection
  • Swelling or bruising
  • Nerve sensitivity (in rare cases with lower wisdom teeth)

Risks are minimized with modern techniques, good communication with the dentist, with proper preparation and monitoring, most interventions pass quickly and painlessly.