Why Keep the Tooth Rather Than Have it Extracted?

We are all meant to have 28 functional teeth in our mouth. If we lose a bad tooth, that’s not the end of the world. Some people may opt to have the tooth extracted; however, for every tooth you lose, you also the function of the tooth that opposes it.

So, if you lose a back tooth, the lower, upper or penultimate tooth will no longer support you, but the middle teeth will have more work to do. The loss of one or two teeth is not going to make a big difference, but over time, as fewer and fewer teeth are left behind, we end up with the smaller teeth doing more work, and that’s when we start to see teeth fractured.

So I would always advise any patient to save the tooth, as it is more practical, rather than have it extracted. If you do lose the tooth, we have implants available nowadays. But why have an implant when you can save your own natural tooth? Why go for a surgical procedure to replace a tooth that you can save in the first place?

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