Why should a periodontist extract my tooth before an implant is placed?
As a surgical specialty, periodontists are trained to gently manipulate both soft (gums) and hard (bone) tissue to specifically achieve desired results while minimizing trauma (damage) to the selected tissues. This type of atraumatic (gentle) approach is precisely what is needed to prevent damage to the soft (gums) and hard (bone) tissues when a tooth is planned for extraction. If traumatized during the extraction process, the bone and gum tissue may not fill the extraction socket completely and result in a defect in the jaw bone. We go to great lengths to perform the most non-traumatic extraction possible for every tooth to ensure complete regeneration of bone needed to place an implant in the future. Using microsurgical instruments and recently developed tooth extraction devices, each tooth is removed as gently and as non-traumatically as possible. This is very different from the way teeth were removed just a few years ago. The result is complete regeneration of the bone to fill the
