What Does A Dry Socket Look Like? How Long Is The Healing For A Top Wisdom Tooth Extraction?

A dry socket can be an extremely painful byproduct of not following your dentist’s instructions after you have had a tooth extracted.  A dry socket looks like the gums have receded from the hole instead of closing in on itself.  The bone underneath is generally exposed causing direct contact with the varying temperatures and the varying firmness’ of foods.    This is caused when you accidentally dislodge the natural plug created by your body to enclose the hole.  Sucking on a straw, smoking a cigarette, and other failures to maintain your open wound as instructed can cause this to occur and cause long periods of discomfort.  There are differing remedies and it is best to see your dentist regarding the severity and possible remedies available to you. 

Healing for any tooth extraction will generally take one to three weeks but can vary considerably by individual.  Wisdom teeth, eye teeth and molars generally take longer because of the size of the holes that are left to heal.  The healing time can be affected by many different things to include, presence of infection, before or after, size of the root and condition of the tooth.  Wisdom teeth can be impacted or have other issues that make it necessary to surgically extract them.  Surgery of any kind is risky but it can add to healing times depending on the amount of cutting needed and any bone breakages that may occur. 

The best advice for any dental surgeries or routine extractions would be to follow the instructions from your dentist including at least one full day knocked out on pain killers because your body heals better when you are sleeping!

I'm on day 7 of a right bottom molar extraction and I was still in a lot of pain, EXCEPT the pain was good some days and then REALLY bad some days, so I was convinced I didn't have a dry socket.  HA!  I went to Urgent Dental Care last night and oh yes I do have a dry socket.  He packed it with some type of packing which was only slightly uncomfortable and only took 1 min. Tops!  After that I was pain FREE in 2 mins and I'm still pain free this morning.  Thank goodness!
If you have a dry socket or even think you might, go back to the Dentist and get out of that horrible pain, it's un-necessary....oh and my dentist didn't charge me for the little packing he put in, because he said I'd suffered enough..LOL...he said it was only like ten bucks anyway.

My daughter got a dry socket 2 days after she had her tooth pulled I don't know what they look like but if you get one you will know because its about 3 times worse than a tooth ache.So if you don't smoke or spit a lot after the tooth was extracted you don't have to worry. You will have a hole where the tooth was for a while I wouldn't worry about that its normal. The hole will close up when the gums heal so trust me you don't need to worry. I hope this helped.

The odds of getting 1 is 5 % smoking is the main reason due from sucking on a cigarette I smoke but I took light drags I was fine you will know what a dry socket is b/c its extremely painful

I had my upper left molar pulled on Friday afternoon (Its now Sunday) and the pain came only after the numbing agent wore off and for the rest of that day. In day 2, my jaw was soar and I could only open my mouth about half an inch before I felt pain/discomfort (vicodin really helped) but there was absolutely no pain with my mouth closed.

A few tips so that you're good to go 24 hours after extraction:

Keep in mind I am not a dentist nor does my advice in any way constitute medical advice.

1. My molar was out about a quarter of an inch.
2. I did not eat anything, suck on a straw, spit, etc for the first 24 hours.
3. My first meal was almost 30 hours after the extraction.
4. To loosen the jaw stiffness, rinse with a saline solution (salt water) a few times a day and your jaw will loosen up.

The upper-right molar is embedded in the gum and might be a little more problematic so I'll keep you guys posted.