5 Questions to Ask Your Oral Surgeon

Before undergoing oral surgery, it’s important to ask the right questions to ensure you’re fully prepared and confident in your surgical team. Key questions include understanding your surgical options, potential complications, the importance of pre- and post-procedure instructions, and verifying your surgeon’s credentials. By discussing these topics with your oral surgeon, you can make informed decisions and improve your overall surgical experience and recovery.

Whether it’s due to a traumatic injury, a dental issue, or something more serious like cancer of the mouth or jaw, undergoing oral surgery is not something you want to go into without knowing all of the details. Fortunately, the first step on the path towards your procedure is a pre-surgery consultation with your oral surgeon.

At your consultation, your oral surgeon should go through the essential information you need to be ready for your surgery, but they should also give you plenty of time to ask questions. Now’s the time to find out everything you want to know in order to be confident in your surgical team and well-prepared for your operation.

If you’re being scheduled for a consultation with an oral surgeon in preparation for surgery, here are a few questions you may want to ask. The answers to these questions will ensure that you’re fully aware of and on board with the surgical and treatment plan that your oral surgeon is developing to treat your condition.

What Are the Options for My Oral Surgery?

All too often, we think of medical care as something that happens to us: we have an illness or an injury, we go to a doctor, and they tell us what to do to feel better. But that’s not the case—your healthcare should be a partnership, not a dictatorship.

One of the most important questions you can ask is, “Are there any options for this procedure, and what are they?” In many cases, there are multiple ways to treat a condition and even different surgical avenues. Some oral surgeries can be performed at varying levels of sedation, allowing you to choose between twilight and total anesthesia.

If you know your options, you’ll be more confident that your procedure is the best way to treat your symptoms.

What Are Potential Complications of My Oral Surgery?

Oral surgery is incredibly safe, but any time a surgeon performs any invasive procedure – even just an injection of oral anesthetic – there’s a slight chance of an unintended effect or complication. In the minority of cases where complications do arise, they tend to be minor and easily reversed.

That being said, it’s always best to go into any surgical procedure understanding the nature and the likelihood of complications. If some of the complications listed by your oral surgeon cause you to worry, talk to them about it. In nearly all cases, the most serious complications are also by far the rarest, and something that sounds worrying can be considerably less so when you consider that it only happens in .1% of all cases.

Why Do I Need to Take the Pre-procedure Steps?

One thing that will absolutely happen at your consultation is that you’ll be given a set of pre-procedure instructions, such as not eating after a specific time or taking a prophylactic antibiotic. This list may or may not include the reason for each step – but the reasons do exist. If you take the time to learn the reasons, then any steps that are inconvenient or uncomfortable will make more sense, and you’ll be more likely to abide by your oral surgeon’s instructions.

Why Do I Need to Follow My Discharge Instructions?

You’ll also get a list of discharge instructions during your consultation. Most of them will make perfect sense – of course, you don’t want to tuck into a pack of peanut brittle right after having dental implants installed. Some of them might seem a little counterintuitive – but if you take the time now to ask why you should do certain things and avoid others after discharge, you’ll better understand your recovery and experience a much easier healing process.

What Are Your and Your Team’s Credentials?

If you’re unfamiliar with your oral surgeon and/or their practice, it’s perfectly acceptable to ask for a review of their credentials. You’re placing a tremendous amount of trust in any medical practitioner, especially a surgeon of any kind. There’s nothing wrong with assuring yourself that they know what they’re doing.

You want an oral surgeon who Is board-certified by the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (ABOMS). This certification shows that the surgeon has spent a significant amount of time in the practice and study of oral surgery and is recognized as an expert in this highly specialized branch of medicine.

You should also ask how often the surgeon performs the specific procedure you’re receiving. Ideally, you want your oral surgeon to have performed this procedure and others like it regularly. That will help you be more confident in your team – practice makes perfect, after all – and when a surgeon performs a given surgery often, it’s more likely that they’re up to date on the latest tools and techniques for guaranteeing a successful outcome.

Are you experiencing a complication and think you might need jaw surgery? Talk to Athens Oral Surgery Center about your treatment options today.

Our team will evaluate the condition of your jaw and create a surgical treatment plan to resolve the issue, restore proper functions, and relieve any pain.