To be petrified..surgical tooth extraction, curly roots and sinus involvement.. NO SEDATION

[Oucht]

Dear god I want to vomit. Molar is cracked through and giving me loads of pain. Dentist cannot get me seen either on NHS or privately for months unless I use their visiting surgeon who does their implants.
It needs extracting and he has looked at the x-ray saying it will be a very difficult extraction with curly roots and that I should be prepared for sinus cavity perforation where they touch, that he would attempt to stitch it up but that it could leave me worse off.

That can be done but without sedation next Wednesday.. or I wait for months when I am in agony with this tooth split down the middle. I said yes and I'm bricking it.

You’ll be fine. It’s not nice having a tooth out but I promise you’ll be fine. This year I had a double extraction followed by a sinus lift and an implant. The sinus was perforated during the procedure and then fixed. All is well and I’ve healed beautifully and my implant is in place.

I know you think you know, but you’re gaslighting the other poster. You’re telling her that her experience was false. That’s pretty shitty.

Wow that sounds like a lot.
The surgeon doing this has recently put molar implants into my mum.. who like me has hard bones and soft teeth.. her jaw bone part took 3 times the amount of time it would take for anyone else!
I know he is a skilled surgeon so that's something! Thank you for sharing.

I did once have a wisdom tooth out where the dentist was kneeling his weight on the chair with one knee and his nurse was holding my head and shoulders. That was my first ever extraction... was hoping for it to be my last but endo hormone "treatment" has landed me with very brittle bones and teeth.

I had a curly root extracted last year, by my dentist who does implants. No problems during the procedure and just a slight ache after.

The knee on the chest is a common dental myth and there are many reasons why people think it has happened to them. One of them is that memory , particularly of stressful proceedures , is notoriously unreliable but repeating the memory reinforces it.

However it is impossible and pointless to kneel on someone's chest when taking a tooth out. There is no way to check this but I could say that I have taken out thousands of teeth in my career and trained many,many dentists. I have never put my knee on someone's chest and neither has even my most inexperienced trainee. Neither have any of my many colleagues ever done this or seen it done , either in this country or in other countries.

Watch the video then Google dentist knee on chest and you will see hundreds of dentists talking about the myth of knee on chest when taking a tooth out. Why do you think so many dental professionals are also discounting this as a technique anyone has ever used?

In the meantime try sensodyne rapid repair, smear it on and don't rinse, it really helped when I was waiting for a filling

I am confident my chest won't be knelt on by this guy! He won't be allowed, I only had breast surgery a few months back, before a cancer scare but after the previous tooth leaving roots in debacle... all whilst dealing with multiple health conditions one of which means I can't be away from the toilet for 20 minutes!

I'll be adult diapered up during the extraction.

We have to laugh or we'd cry.
If anything else goes wrong with me I'm going to a vet to get put down!

I had pretty much the same done whilst 32 weeks pregnant including sinus perforation and it honestly wasn’t as bad as I thought! So hopefully this gives you some comfort. By far the worst for me was the recovery as I could only take paracetamol for pain relief due to being pregnant, so was in a lot of pain for around a week after. Stock up on painkillers and soft/liquid foods and don’t make any plans for a few days after. Good luck hope all goes well xx

OP what kind of sedation do you want and why can't you have it? Do you mean you want a general?

Are there any alternatives? tbh I'd wait longer for better sedation/anasthetic.

I’m not discrediting what you posted. I’m sure that’s accurate. But to extrapolate that it’s never happened to anyone, when there’s clearly a myth that it does happen that dental professionals would also presumably potentially fall foul of, is a different matter.

There is no way anyone would ever kneel on your chest. It is a myth.

However the good news is if your tooth is completely split down the middle then it normally makes taking it out quite a bit easier , particularly if it's been split a while , even if the roots are curved.

Having an oral surgeon who does this sort of thing and even more challenging proceedures all day , every day means you are in the best possible and most competent hands.

I had a molar extracted in preparation for an implant 2 weeks ago. I too had a very 'banana shaped' root. I had local anaesthetic. Honestly OP, it wasn't bad at all. No pain, just lots of tugging. The dentist had to split my tooth in two before he could remove it (well, what was left of it, a crown had fallen out).

The only issue I've had is that I got dry socket afterwards which has been really painful. Antibiotics completed and all good now though, and that was just bad luck, only affecting 10%ish of extractions. The actual procedure took about 15-20minutes and was fine. I drove half an hour home straight after.

GP - valium prescription, take a couple of hours in advance

@Lollygaggle "There is no way anyone would ever kneel on your chest. It is a myth"

so why do dentists say "sorry about that big bruise, I had to rest my knee there to get the tooth out"? If it's some sort of joke, it needs to be stopped! But there IS a bruise...

I had a wisdom tooth out a few years ago which had cracked and had a failed filling in it. I had always out off having it out before because the root was in a difficult place, I think it was in the bone and close to a nerve. The dentist who took it out recommended leaving a small part of the root in because of the risk of damaging the nerve. She said when the tooth was gone the root would float to the top where it can remain, and if there are any problems with it the new position it would be in would be a lot easier to take it out. I didn't have sedation and have had no problems with it since.

If you watch the video posted you can see why it is physically impossible and actually would make extraction impossible.

There is a 18th century etching which depicts a dentist with a knee on the chest and a comical 19th century photograph depicting the same which is where the myth may have originated.

Also , particularly when lower wisdom teeth are taken out surgically bruising may appear on the chest area which leads people to think they have been knelt on.

There are many sensations and noises when a tooth is taken out which can also be why people feel that a dentist may have been kneeling on them , but even a petite person kneeling , one legged on a chest would cause considerable discomfort, pain and damage.

Most dentists will have seen some very strange things , weird ways of treating people but I can guarantee they will never have seen or heard someone admitting to kneeling on a patients chest . But it is a very , very common thing to hear people say they have had it done , which is why so many dentists have posted about the myth.

This isn't how they extract teeth, strength has little bearing and no-one should be kneeling on your chest. The best dentist I know at extracting teeth is a tiny woman that probably weighs 7st wet. It's technique.

Op I see these done fairly regularly and most people are normally fine. You should be totally numb so it'll just be a lot of tugging.

Local anaesthetic should be ok for this. My DD had all four wisdom teeth removed this year and two were growing literally horizontally, so the dentist had to break them to get them out. DD was away with the fairies with the LA and didn't remember much. One of hers was touching the sinus cavity and they gave her after care advice - antibiotics, a sinus inhaler, no blowing nose or sneezing etc - to help protect during the healing.

I hope it all goes ok OP.

There is a bruise, particularly if it is a lower wisdom tooth that is difficult to get out , because the muscle attachments in the area often mean the bruise appears in the collar bone area.

I would sincerely hope no dentist makes that joke because it is so well known as a dental myth that no dentist I have ever spoken to has ever seen happen .

It is physically impossible for most dentist even to attempt to get a knee on a patients chest and it would make taking a tooth out virtually impossible. Look at the video I posted earlier, it has nothing gory in it , but perhaps don't watch if you are phobic.

I broke a tooth a couple of years ago and the dentist asked me if I wanted to know the procedure of removing the tooth. I asked if he would be kneeling on my chest, as I had heard that this is what happens. The dentist laughed and said that it was a myth and that it would never happen.

Anyway, i was one of the lucky ones and the tooth was removed in under one minute with just a bit of rocking from side to side.

I really hope that things go well for you and that it will soon be over. Toothache is awful. 💐

Can they not do a root canal, post and crown? No pain as it will have pulp removed and the crack will be seal inside the crown which it won't have to support as the post will do so. I had that done and its been in nearly 20 years with not a peep from it since.

If the tooth is cracked through , as op says it is, it cannot be repaired and has to come out.

My dentist said as a referral case being that the roots are so curled she would recommend IV sedation so I am not aware of what is happening but the wait for that is far longer than I can manage. The pain of a cracked tooth is horrible enough for me to give it a go next week... right before xmas. Crazy woman.

You shouldn't feel pain- they'll apply topical numbing then local anaesthetic injections. Yes, there'll be some pushing and pulling, but presumably you're in pain now with the tooth, so better just get it done. The risks with sedation for dental work are not insignificant, so I think it's possibly even better without!