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| Dry Socket |  Dry socket (alveolar osteitis) is an infection in your tooth socket after a tooth is pulled out. It happens when the blood clot at the site of a tooth extraction is disrupted rashly. Because of this the alveolar bone is left unprotected and uncovered to the oral environment. The socket can be stuffed with food and bacteria.
As a rule, the pain begins 3-4 days after the extraction. This is often very disagreeable for the patient, because symptoms include extreme pain (sometimes worse than the toothache that indicated the extraction), a foul taste, bad breath, and swelling in the infected area. Nerves are uncovered, and sometimes the bone is observable in the empty socket. It is often accompanied by what feels like an earache. There may be lymph-node participation.
Dry socket happens in about 5% of all tooth extractions. It has been proved that women are at higher risk than men for developing dry socket. The majority of the women that have developed it take an oral contraceptive. As for the smokers – they showed a greatly increased risk of developing alveolar osteitis after tooth extraction. This is thought to be due to the decreased amount of oxygen available in the healing tissues as a result of carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke. It is prudent to avoid smoking following tooth extraction for at least 48 hours to lessen the risk of developing this dry socket.
Largely the treatment for alveolar osteitis is preventative. Therefore, keeping proper oral hygiene is a must before and during the recovery period. It would be good to have your teeth efficiently cleaned several days before dental surgery. Take all of your regular medicines for systemic illnesses (diabetics and cardiovascular diseases). Women are advised to have extractions within the last five days of their menstrual cycle, in order to reduce chances of developing dry socket because the estrogen levels are lower during that part of the cycle.
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