Surgical — 5 min read
Tooth Extraction
How a tooth comes out determines what can be built there afterwards. The socket you leave behind is the site your future implant has to live in.
Screened and introduced free, usually within a few hours. Sunny Isles Beach, Florida and the surrounding corridor.
Indications
Removal is usually the right call when
Extraction is the last option in a sequence, not the first. A good surgeon will tell you when a tooth is saveable by other means — and will also tell you plainly when repeated attempts to save it are the more expensive path.
- A vertical root fracture, which no restoration can seal
- Decay extending below the bone with too little tooth left to crown
- An impacted wisdom tooth causing infection, cysts or damage to the tooth in front
- Advanced periodontal disease with mobility and significant bone loss
- A root canal that has failed and cannot be retreated or surgically resected
- Orthodontic crowding requiring planned space, or a retained baby tooth blocking an adult one
Good candidate if
- The tooth is genuinely unsaveable, confirmed by imaging
- You want the site preserved for a future implant
- Wisdom teeth are impacted and causing symptoms or damage
- You want the nerve relationship mapped before lower third molar surgery
No cost, no obligation, no lead list.
The detail
Preserving the site while you remove the tooth
How a tooth comes out determines what can be built there afterwards. The socket you leave behind is the site your future implant has to live in.
A socket left to heal on its own loses substantial ridge width in the first six months, most of it in the first three. If an implant is likely at that site, the extraction should be atraumatic — periotomes and controlled sectioning rather than force — and the socket grafted at the same appointment. Skipping the graft frequently converts a straightforward future implant into a case that also needs ridge augmentation.
Wisdom teeth are a separate calculation. Impacted lower thirds sit close to the inferior alveolar nerve, and a CBCT is the difference between knowing that relationship and guessing at it. Where the roots genuinely wrap the nerve, a coronectomy — removing the crown and leaving the roots undisturbed — is often safer than complete removal. Not every practice offers it.
The sequence
What actually happens, in order.
Timings vary between practices and cases. The order does not — and a plan that skips a step is worth asking about.
Imaging
Periapical radiographs, and CBCT for impacted lower wisdom teeth or any root near the sinus or nerve.
Anaesthesia
Local for most cases; IV sedation or general anaesthesia for multiple impactions or anxious patients.
Atraumatic removal
The ligament is released and the tooth sectioned where needed, preserving the bony walls rather than expanding them.
Socket graft
Where an implant is planned, bone graft material and a membrane hold the ridge dimension during healing.
Healing
Gum closes in one to two weeks; bone fills over three to four months. Implant placement at three to six months if grafted.
Getting the right hands
Who should be doing your tooth extraction.
This is the variable that decides your result, and it is the one you have least ability to assess from the outside.
Not years in dentistry. How many of these they do in a month, and what the difficult ones looked like.
Anyone can photograph a result on delivery day. We want to see it after it has been used.
CBCT, microscope, scanner, printer — whichever this case genuinely requires, on site rather than referred out.
For anything ceramic, the technician is half the result. A dentist who cannot name theirs is outsourcing blind.
Tooth Extraction FAQ
What people ask us about tooth extraction.
Including the cost question, answered with a real range rather than a request to call.
Locally, a simple extraction runs roughly $200 to $400. Surgical removal of an impacted wisdom tooth is generally $400 to $800 per tooth, more with IV sedation. Socket preservation grafting adds around $400 to $900 and is usually worth it if an implant is planned.
Simple extractions are largely comfortable within two to three days. Impacted wisdom teeth swell for three to four days and settle within a week. Avoid smoking, straws and vigorous rinsing for 72 hours — that is what precipitates dry socket.
If there is any chance of an implant there, yes. Grafting at the time of extraction is far cheaper and simpler than rebuilding a collapsed ridge two years later. If the site is a lower wisdom tooth with no replacement planned, it is unnecessary.
No. Fully erupted wisdom teeth in a functional bite that you can actually clean can be left alone and monitored. Removal is indicated for recurrent infection, decay in the second molar behind them, cyst formation or orthodontic reasons.
Sometimes. It requires an intact socket wall and no active infection. Where those conditions are absent, grafting and waiting produces a far more predictable result than forcing an immediate placement.