Minor Oral Surgery Service
What is the Minor Oral Surgery Service?
Patients may be referred to DCO Dental Group via the Minor Oral Surgery Service. This usually happens when you need dental care which cannot be provided by your regular dentist. If your Dentist believes this is the best option for you, they will refer you to our services via a referral management centre and provide you with a unique URN so you can track your referral progress. This can be done online at https://www.dentalreferrals.org. Once your referral has been accepted and assessed, you will receive a letter or phone call from the Oral Surgery Team to help you with the next steps of booking an appointment.
The term “Minor oral surgery” refers to smaller dental operations and includes:
- Removing wisdom teeth, impacted teeth, retained roots and/or severely broken-down
- Apicectomies
- Biopsies
Why do I need a tooth removed?
There is lots of reasons why you might need to have a tooth removed. For example:
- A broken tooth that can’t be repaired by a simple filling or crown
- Severe tooth decay
- An abscess on your gum from an infected tooth
- Loose tooth – Usually this is caused by Gum disease
- Impacted wisdom tooth
- Crowded teeth
Why can’t I have the extraction at my practice?
The majority of the time, your dentist will be able to remove teeth in their own dental practice. Occasionally, with some more difficult cases, a referral is needed for a more specialised dentist to carry out the treatment. This is usually treatment that, although a little more difficult, does not require a hospital referral and therefore you are referred to a Minor Oral Surgery Service in a general practice setting with a dentist who has a specialist interest in Oral Surgery.