Dentists and Oral Surgeons: The Difference Between The Two

Nov 20
12:18

2010

Andrea Avery

Andrea Avery

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Oral surgeons and dentists, the difference between the two doesn't seem obvious.

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Oral surgeons and dentists,Dentists and Oral Surgeons: The Difference Between The Two Articles you may wonder about the difference between the two. Upon initial consideration, they both seem to perform a similar and overlapping set of tasks. Both dentists and oral surgeons use techniques that involve penetrating the tooth and gum tissue so as to rebuild or repair damage. However, there are some key differences between dentists and oral surgeons worth noting.

Let us suppose that you have just had a serious injury to your mouth, losing tooth, gum tissue, and bone. This is an incredibly painful situation and will cause a great deal of anxiety about how the damaged area can be successfully reconstructed. After a likely visit to a hospital emergency room, you will then enter the long process of repair. Your oral surgeon and dentist will cooperate to reconstruct your mouth and get it back to normal by using their own particular training and sets of techniques in conjunction. In many cases, you may also need the service of an orthodontist to guide your teeth throughout the process of healing. Each mouth health specialist will contribute something toward the total goal.

The first step your oral surgeon will take is implanting new bone in place of the missing bone. This is a delicate process and it is important that antibiotics are used to acclimate your body to the new bone and prevent infection. The oral surgeon’s role in this part of the process is to operate at the deepest level of gum tissue, which is usually outside of the dentist’s area of focus. It will take several months before your body replaces this new bone with its own, making a foundation strong enough to place implants.

Dental implants go inside of the gum tissue and are a part of the foundation of the false tooth that will attach to it. Dental implants are made of titanium because of that metal’s property of easily fusing with bone. Bone grows around titanium and bonds to it as if it were bone itself. The oral surgeon will be the one responsible for installing the titanium implants into the fully healed bone graft.

It will take another several months before the actual replacement teeth can be attached to the implant. The implant is threaded so that the false tooth can be securely screwed into it. Your dentist will have the role of designing the teeth, matching the color and shape based on your teeth and molds taken throughout the process. The information collected by dentists is sent to labs where the teeth are actually fabricated.

Dentists have the job of fitting the false teeth into the implant and double checking the final result to make sure the patient is happy and comfortable with the prostheses.

Dentists and oral surgeons have different responsibilities. They focus on different areas of the mouth. However, together they are able to fully repair serious damage to the mouth, including loss of teeth, gum, and bone. Without their specialization and different sets of tools, they would not be able to as effectively heal the mouths of those who have suffered severe mouth damage.