To maintain good dental health, you should go for regular dental check-ups with your preferred dentist. Dental hygiene has come a long way in recent years and with the highlight focusing on prevention, the state of our children's teeth is so much better than ours was when we were their age.

This is partly to do with additives in our public drinking water, new improved toothpastes, and an improvement in dental technology, enabling more effective checks ups and better diagnosis and courses of treatments.

The advancements in dental science in terms of fillings, bridges, root canals, caps etc, has meant that our dentists can often help us to keep our teeth for longer, lessening the number of extractions that we may have to endure in our lifetimes. However, extractions cannot be avoided altogether, and there are certain circumstances where it not only becomes necessary to have an extraction, but safer in terms of our overall dental health.

One of the main reasons for an extraction, is when the health of a tooth becomes compromised beyond reasonable repair. This would normally mean when the root or nerve within the root becomes painful. Superficial damage to teeth can often be repaired through cosmetic surgery. So for example, if you should break or partly shatter a tooth, the dentist may be able to file the remains of the tooth down, and fit a cap, perfectly color matched with your other teeth, and to all intents and purposes, an invisible repair. But when toothache develops, it is often a sign that the root nerve has become damaged, whether through decay or infection, and that tooth will need to be taken out.

Left in place, a damaged tooth not only causes continued pain, which can be quite unbearable, but it can also compromise the health of the other teeth around it, or even the surrounding gums. In such circumstances it is far safer for your overall dental health to have such a tooth extracted.

Tooth extraction using the skills and equipment available through modern dentistry, makes the process a much safer and far less traumatic experience than it was a few years ago. Pain killing injections, (themselves far less painful thanks to the new thinner needles now available), make the process pain free although some slight pain and swelling may be evident for a few days after the extraction. However, this is only usually the case when we have our larger molars or wisdom teeth extracted.

Wisdom teeth are the last teeth we develop, normally around the age of 18 to 20 years of age. In some cases they never actually develop beyond the gums, and in others they do, but seldom grow to the stage where they can be considered useful for eating with, because they seldom mesh together properly to allow a proper bite. In some instances wisdom teeth can interfere with the development of other teeth, and in these cases, it is safer, and more preferable for your long term dental health, to have them removed to prevent the health of other teeth being adversely affected in the future.

Modern dentistry is now almost a work of art. Teeth whitening and other cosmetic dental procedures, (including extractions), are very much in vogue. There is no longer any reason or justification to fear your dentist. With their help, you will keep a healthy set of teeth well into your old age.