While recovering from any kind of surgery can be a challenge, if you’re having oral surgery like getting your wisdom teeth out or having dental implants in Overland Park, the recovery can often be more challenging because it can affect the way that you feed yourself for a while. But luckily, with the right aftercare and preparation, you can recover quickly and easily from most dental surgeries.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three tips for recovering from oral surgery.
Prioritize Keeping Your Mouth Clean
As with any surgery, when you’re trying to help yourself heal and recover, keeping the affected areas clean is going to be one of your top priorities.
With oral surgery, there are a few different ways that you can keep your mouth clean and encourage fast healing. In some cases, you can and should do mouth rinses regularly so that everything stays properly hydrated and food doesn’t get stuck anywhere it shouldn’t. This can usually be done with salt water. However, your doctor may also recommend something like a rinse that’s meant for killing bacteria.
Along with this, you should also replace any gauze or other coverings at the intervals that your surgeon has recommended to help ensure that the surgery site stays as clean and well protected as possible.
Know The Signs Of Infection
As you’re recovering at home from an oral surgery, something that you’ll want to keep an eye out for is infection.
While it can take some time for you to start feeling better in the first few days after oral surgery, if you don’t feel like you’re healing as quickly as you should be or you start to feel worse and worse as time goes on, there’s a chance you could be dealing with an infection. So if you notice anything like a fever, swelling that isn’t going down, or trouble with swallowing or breathing, you should contact your oral surgeon to see if there’s an infection at the surgical site.
Use Ice Wisely
After oral surgery, your mouth is likely to be very sore and swollen. To combat these symptoms, you can use ice on your face. However, you’ll want to be wise with how you use ice so that it’s helpful and not hurtful.
If your surgeon gave you icing instructions following your surgery, make sure you stick to those. They will usually include where to place the ice around your face and how long to keep the ice there before taking a break. A good rule of thumb is to keep an ice pack on for 15 minutes and then give your face a 15 minute break before putting the ice pack on again.
If you’re going to be undergoing oral surgery before too long, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you prepare for the recovery process afterwards.
