Dr Eric interview

Dr. Eric Bergen, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Rock Cliff Oral Surgery, helps his patients feel comfortable before wisdom teeth removal by providing thorough explanations of the process and using sedation during the procedure. The actual surgical procedure involves accessing the tooth, numbing the area with anesthesia, making an incision, removing bone and sectioning the tooth into two pieces to remove the roots. The procedure typically takes about 40 minutes. Rockcliffe takes care of clients after the procedure by providing post-op instructions, pain medication, and a mouthwash. They also offer an emergency line for any concerns or questions. Wisdom teeth should ideally be removed between the ages of 15-16 to prevent problems with eruption and crowding. However, they can be removed at any age, although the recovery may be more involved. After 30-35 years of age, alternative treatments may be considered. Alright, so what's your name? So I'm Dr. Eric Bergen. Dr. Eric Bergen? Yeah, I'm an oral and maxillofacial surgeon here at Rock Cliff Oral Surgery. Alright, my first question is how do you help your patients feel comfortable before having their wisdom teeth removed? So making the patient feel comfortable is one of the most important things with the whole process. I find that people do better and are more comfortable if they understand the process, what we're doing, and why we're doing it. So I do spend a lot of time during the consult. So we always meet first, you know, we're not on the day of the surgery, but another day when they don't have to be nervous about anything. We meet and we talk about what we're doing, why the wisdom teeth need to come out, the risks of not doing it, and then we kind of talk through the process of how we go about taking the wisdom teeth out and how we do that. One of the things that we do a lot with wisdom teeth is we typically do that under sedation, and so that's a big thing that helps keep the patient comfortable during the whole process. So when we do the procedure, they know exactly what's happening and all that, but they don't have to experience anything. So in the room, when they come in, they talk. Once we get the little idea in there, then we just kind of talk to them about everything that's going on, and then we give them medicines to make them fall off to sleep, and once they're asleep, they don't see, hear, or understand what's going on. So they just do the whole process. So that helps a lot with some of the anxiety of the wisdom teeth. Okay, that's good. What is the process for removing wisdom teeth? Like the actual surgical procedure? Well, it's dictated a lot by the position of the teeth. So typically, wisdom teeth that need to be seen by an oral surgeon, like myself, are typically impacted wisdom teeth, and so the process of doing that, so we have to access the tooth. So once we get the patient in the room and if they're going to sleep, we put them off to sleep. So once they're asleep, we then inject local anesthesia into that area to get the area numb, and then I use an incision, I make a small incision, and the gums overlying the tooth, so over and reflect the gums in that area, and then identify where the tooth is. Typically use a small drill to remove a little bit of the bone that's around the teeth, and then we usually section the teeth into two pieces that allows it to separate it into the two roots, and then we have a little instrument to help wiggle those little roots out. That's very interesting. How long does it usually take you guys to remove a wisdom tooth? So typically, a wisdom, a traditional or a regular wisdom tooth procedure, depending on the teeth, I typically book about 40 minutes per procedure, so about 40 minutes, yeah. Okay, that's fast. How does Rockcliffe care for their clients after their wisdom teeth is removed? Yeah, so that's also really important to us to make sure that we are taking care of them afterwards. We know that it can be a tough process. There's always a little bit of recovery afterwards, so we go over all the post-op instructions with them, so they get written instructions, and then we do a verbal confirmation as well. Typically, their pain is managed with overly counter pain medicines like ibuprofen and Tylenol. Sometimes people need something a little bit stronger, like one of the narcotic medications, we provide all that. Typically, there's not an antibiotic needed afterwards. Oftentimes, we'll do an antibiotic before surgery that helps protect them during to prevent the risk of infection, and then usually a mouthwash afterwards. The process is usually two to three days after the procedure. That's kind of the time that's the most uncomfortable, so making sure that they're on their pain medicines carefully during that time there, and then kind of going through the post-op instructions with them, and we've got all of those written out. We also have an emergency line, so if anybody has any concerns or questions or something just doesn't quite feel right, they can call in 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They can get in touch with somebody, and then if something were more severe to happen, we can see them back in the office, or we do all have hospital privileges, so if there was something that was more severe, like a severe infection or something like that, which would be exceptionally unlikely for wisdom teeth, but something like that, we could potentially see them at the hospital if we needed to, but that would be very rare. Okay. When should one get their wisdom teeth removed? So it all depends on the development of those wisdom teeth, and that's why we rely on the general dentist to screen and identify those people when they need to, but it's typically around 13-15 years of age when we start really looking at that very closely. The wisdom tooth- the term wisdom tooth come- came from this idea that when you were grown or you were wise, that's when those teeth came in, which is typically about 18 years of age, so we want to go in there and get them taken out before they start to cause some of those problems with eruption, like crowding the teeth and those kind of things, so that's why that kind of 14-15 time frame is when we start looking at that, and usually 15-16 is about the time we take them out. Wow. What do you suggest- what age should- what do you suggest getting them out before it's- you can't get them out? Before you can't? Yeah. So you can always get them out. It's just the more root development you have on them, the longer they are, so the longer- the more involved the recovery is, and if they push the teeth out of the way or they do something like that, like the wisdom teeth create these little pockets back behind the last teeth, if there's a cavity that develops in there or something like that, obviously taking out the wisdom teeth doesn't, you know, reverse those problems. It doesn't cause the teeth to, you know, straighten out or anything like that, so we want to get them out before they start to cause those problems, but you can always do it at any point in time. You know, I've taken out a wisdom tooth on an 80-year-old, so we can always do it. It just depends on kind of what it is and how- how involved the risk is with it. Sometimes people will come in and say, you know, I'm having a little bit of a problem here or whatever, and if they're older and that, sometimes we try to do different things other than taking the wisdom teeth out. So typically in your teens, once you pass 30, 35 years of age, that's when we start thinking, hey, is there other things we can do other than taking the wisdom teeth out? All right, well, thank you Dr. Bergen. Absolutely.