Better suggestions for your patients include soft foods such as mashed potatoes, applesauce, yogurt, and gelatin. Proper dental hygiene is also extremely important in the prevention of dry socket.
Yogurt, pudding, applesauce and Jell-O are some go-to recovery foods: no chewing involved! Stick to these post-extraction staples for the first 24 hours after your surgery before moving on to soft foods that require chewing.
Eat Soft Foods And Avoid Crunchy, Hard, And Tough Foods
Eat yogurt, smoothies, applesauce, pudding, and other soft foods after your surgery. After about a week, you can usually start adding more solid foods to your diet. Avoid crunchy, hard, and tough foods for at least 2 weeks.
Lifestyle and home remedies
Take pain medications as prescribed. Avoid smoking or using tobacco products. Drink plenty of clear liquids to remain hydrated and to prevent nausea that may be associated with some pain medications. Rinse your mouth gently with warm salt water several times a day.
One of the best things you can do is rinse your mouth with warm saltwater. This will help to remove any food particles that could be irritating your dry socket and promote blood clotting. You want to make sure that you're using warm water and not hot because hot water could further irritate your wound.
We recommend a gentle salt water rinse to clean the area that is healing and prevent food from getting caught. The salt water promotes healing and reduces the risk of complications. Be careful to use gentle swishing motions. Too much force while swishing the salt water could irritate and possibly lead to a dry socket.
When Can I Stop Worrying About Dry Socket? Until the full recovery of your extraction site, a dry socket can form if you fail to follow the care tips. Usually, a week (7-8 days) after wisdom tooth extraction, you can stop worrying about a dry socket as gums take this much time to close fully.
It can be helpful to drink plenty of water after a tooth extraction. Eating soft foods for the first 24 hours can also reduce the risk of irritating the extraction site. People should avoid alcohol, caffeine, or carbonated drinks. They should also avoid using a straw, as these can dislodge a blood clot in the socket.
Honey soaked in sterile gauze placed in dry socket cases showed accelerated healing with minimum patient discomfort. Excess use of eugenol can lead to necrosis of bone. Honey can be used as a medicament for the management of dry socket.
In addition, firm or sharp solid foods can harm the healing site or potentially dislodge the blood clot, resulting in a dry socket.
Many people are not aware that what they eat can affect healing after an extraction. It is recommended to eat food that does not pose a risk of leaving remnants behind. This includes nuts, popcorn, rice, and pasta. These types of foods can dislodge blood clots from extraction sites and cause dry socket.
Dry socket may be caused by a range of factors, such as an underlying infection in the mouth, trauma from the tooth extraction or problems with the jawbone. The condition occurs more often with wisdom teeth in the lower jaw than with other teeth. You are also more likely than others to develop dry socket if you: smoke.
It is best to avoid anything that could make dry socket worse or slow the healing process, such as smoking tobacco, spitting vigorously, or drinking through a straw.
Dry socket will heal on its own in most cases, but professional help from a dentist can speed up the healing process, lessen pain and discomfort, and reduce the risk of infection.
The highest risk for this condition is between days 2-3 after tooth extraction. After day 4, the risk of dry socket is passed. This condition rarely happens (about 4% of all extractions) and is most common after bottom wisdom teeth extraction.
Dry sockets occur most often in the lower jaw and are usually associated with removal of the molar teeth. Stitches, which are usually placed after the removal of an impacted tooth, do not prevent dry sockets.
After a tooth extraction, you should develop a blood clot in the socket (hole) that's left behind. It'll look like a dark-colored scab. But if you have a dry socket, the clot will be absent and you'll be able to see bone. For this reason, dry sockets usually appear white.
The length of time of a blood clot's dissolution will vary from patient to patient. Typically, your tooth extraction site will be completely healed anywhere from seven to ten days after the extraction procedure.
Prevention methods include avoiding smoking before and after surgery and a traumatic surgery, the use of antibiotics, such as, azithromycin, can be considered, chlorohexidine rinse or gel can be effective in the reduction of dry socket incidence.
No, it is not safe to used mouthwash after a tooth extraction because it can cause the blood clot to dislodge. The golden rule is to avoid all mouthwash for at least 24 hours after the extraction. Instead, you can swish around warm salt water in your mouth to keep things clean. This can be done 4 times a day.
Use a Cold Compress
If you have dry sockets or are experiencing swelling, applying a cold compress to the outside area of your face can help ease your discomfort.
You probably experience a dry socket if you can look into your open mouth in a mirror and see the bone where your tooth was before. The explicit throbbing pain in your jaw represents another telltale signal of dry sockets. The pain may reach your ear, eye, temple or neck from the extraction site.