Dr. Katie To explains why teeth are organs with nerves and blood flow, then walks through a wellness approach to extraction. Before surgery, patients optimize with blood work and vitamin D checks. During the procedure, your own blood is spun into platelet-rich fibrin and placed in the socket to speed healing without narcotics.
If I needed my root canal taken out, I'm understanding that wellness dentistry does things differently. So what is the process like for getting a tooth removed at a wellness practice? Yes. So for us, whenever that the patient had to face a decision that they're going to have to remove a tooth, for us, that is the body part. That's an organ. The tooth is truly an organ. It have nerve function, it have lymphatic, it have blood flow through it, and it have function of you helping you talking, chewing, swallowing, right? Eating. So it's not the light decision, first of all, to just decide to take the tooth out. For us, it's a whole process of exam, evaluation, referral, diagnostic confirmations, and then give patients all the possible options. In the end, it's the patient's body. They have the right to choose what they want to do. Most of our patients, they are so sick for so long, their body been so weak dealing with chronic infection, they can't handle another infection and hope that infection will resolve. So they choose to part with the tooth. When that is the final decision, we're here to support them. Then first of all, we want to make sure that they get the blood work done to make sure their vitamin D, is sufficient. So when they going through the surgery, they can heal properly, they can build new bone after the tooth is removed. And so they can heal and then move on from that infection. That before is evaluate blood work. We also encourage them to start eating clean, improve on hydration and sleep. But that's critical to immune system and recovery. We have a whole checklist of what to do before the surgery. And then during the surgery, the day of surgery, patients do have choice, of course, beforehand to doing with local anesthesia or doing it when they have general anesthesia with a medical doctor by their side. So it is a personal preference. Nobody say you have to be sedated or awake for it, but majority of patients can handle that with local anesthesia. When they come in, the process involves, first of all, we always draw blood. I draw blood and then put it in the centrifuge, medical grade centrifuge. And we spin it down to separate the white blood cells, the red blood cells, and the platelet-rich fibrin. We use that to actually putting back into the socket when the socket been treated and the tooth removed. We clean out the periodontal ligament thoroughly. Clean with ozone gas, copious amount of ozone water all the time throughout the appointment, and clean it with the laser wavelength that can help clean the bone thoroughly before we put back in the PRF material. Then suture it shut so there's no bacteria communicate with the site. And patient go home with another list what to do for post-op and a big bag with goodie including a huge red light therapy. And vitamin C and all the homeopathic remedies that help them heal without using narcotics or antibiotics that weaken the system. So it is a big deal. We see the patient back for 2 weeks post-op visit, and that's actually my favorite visit because that's when I hear success stories. Not every patient at the 2-week visit would have success stories, but the one that we hear, we more often are like, I got my energy back. I feel my pain goes away. I didn't know this is going to happen. This is amazing. A lot of people going through the surgery with no expectations what's going to happen. They just want to get rid of the infection. But when the infection's out of the body, amazing things happen. And that is my highlight visit where they're going to tell me how they feel. And they said, I don't need to take any pain medication. It was amazing. Those are my favorite feedback from patients.
