Cavities and gum disease aren’t the only threats to your oral health. Whether you have a severely injured tooth, jaw pain that won’t go away, or another potentially debilitating issue, you’ll want to have an expert examine you as quickly as possible so that your problem can be solved quickly and efficiently. Dr. Jacobs offers a wide variety of general oral surgery procedures and technology in LaGrange, GA that will help your mouth function normally again so that you can continue to get the most out of life. Call us today to schedule an appointment if you’re in need of a special procedure.
Your canines are the somewhat pointed teeth located near the front of your mouth on either side of your incisors. They play an important role in biting and chewing, but unfortunately, they can sometimes become impacted (meaning they fail to appear in your mouth) due to overcrowding or the presence of extra teeth. The type of treatment you’ll receive depends on the situation; sometimes we can simply expose the impacted tooth and guide it into the correct position, but in other cases, an extraction may be needed.
Removing teeth should never be your first option; it’s better to try and have them repaired first. However, some damage is simply too severe, and we may have no choice but to remove the tooth to keep the rest of your mouth healthy. While some extractions are simple, others require a surgical approach, which means removing some gum and bone tissue; we may even need to break the tooth into sections before we can take it out.
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You have a band of tissue called a frenum that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth; another one connects your lips to the gums. If a frenum is too large, you can become tongue-tied or lip-tied; for children, this can lead to serious developmental issues such as having trouble speaking or difficulty swallowing. That’s why we might recommend a frenectomy to help your little one’s mouth move as freely as it needs to.
If your face, mouth, or jaw was badly injured in an accident, you could need emergency facial trauma repair. After an examination, we’ll decide what kind of treatment is necessary for your case. This might include corrective jaw surgery for when your jaw has become misaligned, or it might mean soft tissue and dental repair via gum grafts and laceration stitching. In the case of teeth that were knocked out during an injury, we might even recommend the placement of dental implants.
In addition to surgery, we can also help diagnose and treat certain oral diseases. We can perform a clinical examination where we check the color and shape of suspicious tissues in the mouth. For example, if you have oral cancer, we might find reddish patches in your mouth as well as sores and strange lumps. A biopsy might be necessary to confirm a diagnosis. No matter what we find, we’ll point you in the right direction for further examination and, if necessary, treatment.
Do you wake up with a headache every day without realizing why? Is there pain in your jaw that just won’t go away? Do you suffer from a constant ringing sound in your ears? All of these may point to a problem with your TMJ – the joint used to move your lower jaw. The disorder will need to be treated if you want to be able to move your jaw normally and without pain again, and in some cases that means performing surgery on the joint itself.
Obstructive sleep apnea is a dangerous condition where your breathing is stopped multiple times every night, resulting in poor sleep and stress on your cardiovascular system. Most of the time, the obstruction is a structure in your mouth or throat that has collapsed and blocked the airway. If you have certain types of sleep apnea, or cannot tolerate CPAP Therapy, you are likely a candidate for a sleep apnea appliance. In severe cases, you may need to have surgery performed in order to adjust or even remove such structures so that you will be able to breathe normally throughout the night.
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Our oral surgery office uses a cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scanner that creates a three-dimensional image of your teeth as well as the bone, soft tissues, and nerve pathways around them. These scans provide much more detail than regular dental or facial X-rays and allow for extremely accurate treatment planning. For instance, if you’re receiving implants, a CBCT scan will help us place them in exactly the right spots where they can join safely with the bone without damaging any nerves.
