HealthInfo Waitaha Canterbury
Recovery after having your wisdom teeth removed
Te whakamātūtū i muri i te tangohanga a ō niho kōhari tuatoru
People differ a lot in how they recover from wisdom tooth surgery. How quickly you heal depends on how easy it was to take the teeth out. In general, here is what to expect (and some tips to speed up recovery).
During the first 24 hours
What to expect
- Your face may swell around the area where the tooth was extracted. To minimise the swelling, place an ice pack (or a small bag of frozen peas wrapped in a clean cloth) on the side of your face for 10 to 15 minutes every hour for the first 24 hours.
- The space where your tooth was may bleed. To control the bleeding, put a piece of clean, moist gauze over the empty tooth socket and bite down firmly. Keep doing so for about 45 minutes. Repeat this if you continue to have light bleeding. If you have heavy bleeding that won’t stop, contact your dentist or oral surgeon.
Do
- Take the pain relief prescribed by your surgeon or dentist for the first 48 hours. It's better to prevent pain by taking it according to instructions rather than to wait for pain to develop.
- Chew food on the other side of your mouth. If you've had a difficult extraction, only consume soft foods and liquids for the first 24 hours.
Do not
- Try not to rinse or spit for 24 hours after your teeth come out.
- Avoid hot liquids (such as coffee or soup), hard food, alcohol, vigorous exercise, and touching the wound. These things can dislodge the clot which helps you to heal.
- While your mouth is numb, be careful not to bite your tongue, lip or the inside of your cheek.
- Avoid smoking because it decreases the blood supply and can bring germs and contaminants into your mouth.
After 24 hours
- If your face is still swollen, treat it with heat. Apply a moist warm towel to the swollen area for 20 minutes, followed by a break of 20 minutes, then repeat.
- Rinse your mouth with an antiseptic mouth rinse or warm salt water (half a teaspoon of salt in a cup of warm water) after meals and before bed.
- If you've been prescribed antibiotics, make sure you continue to take them until you've finished the whole course. Do not stop taking them while there are still some left.
- Keep your mouth clean. Brush your teeth with a soft toothbrush twice a day.
If you've had stitches, they may be self-dissolving. If they aren't self-dissolving, your surgeon or dentist will need to take them out after a week. Ask your surgeon or dentist what type you've been given.
It will take a few weeks to months to heal completely. But you'll usually have healed enough within the first week or two to be reasonably comfortable and pain-free.
Possible complications of having your wisdom teeth removed
Two important complications include:
Dry socket
Dry socket is common and either happens when a blood clot has failed to form in the extracted tooth socket or the blood clot that does form is dislodged. This delays healing.
Dry socket typically happens three or four days after the extraction and causes pain (ranging from dull to severe) and a foul mouth smell. Your oral surgeon or dentist will treat this by placing a medicated dressing in the socket. You'll need to replace the dressing every 24 hours until the symptoms go away.
Paraesthesia
Paraesthesia is less common. Wisdom teeth impacted in the jaw may be close to nerves. Sometimes these nerves can be bruised or damaged when the tooth is removed. This causes numbness (called a paraesthesia) of the tongue, lip or chin that can last a few days, weeks, months or very rarely may be permanent.
Written by HealthInfo clinical advisers. Last reviewed March 2022.
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Review key: HICPA-75368
