Tips for protecting soft tissues during dental extractions

Heidi Lobprise, DVM, DAVDC, a senior pet advocate and veterinary dental specialist at Cibolo Creek Veterinary Hospital in Boerne, Texas, discusses steps she takes to protect surrounding tissues during dental extractions. She also shares simple tools and positioning strategies that can make extractions safer and more controlled.

The following is a transcript of the video, lightly edited for clarity and cohesion.

Lobprise: As we're working with these sharpened instruments and our high-speed burs, we do want to be careful about surrounding tissues. As I'm doing a flap, I make sure that when I have my blade and handle, I'm cutting exactly where I want to and hopefully not slip too much. I mean, everybody slips occasionally, but be careful. Anytime I'm holding a periosteal elevator or dental elevator, winged elevator, that instrument is just barely past the tip of my finger, so when I'm using it, if there is some kind of slip, it's not going to go too far. I've got some protection and good control there.

When we're looking at our mandibular teeth, I'm literally using a tongue depressor to depress the tongue. I want to protect the soft tissues from that bur, from my instruments.

Some people will use another instrument to hold back tissue while they're cutting teeth, but that can sometimes injure the instrument, so not a good idea unless you've already messed it up and can use it. We call those “zombies”.

And I also use lip retractors. There are some specific lip retractors that work, or I've used a spiral perm roller that you get at Sally’s Beauty Supply, Walmart, Amazon, wherever, and it can work as a soft mouth gag that also helps keep lips out of the way.