Are orthodontic tooth extractions harmful?

  With the increasing emphasis on image beauty, orthodontic treatment for dental errors has become very popular. However, many patients or patients’ families do not understand that orthodontic treatment often requires tooth extraction, worrying that the teeth extracted in orthodontic treatment will affect chewing, so that the best age for wrong orthodontic treatment is given up because of reluctance to extract teeth. This is unfortunate because a person’s unattractive teeth will affect his future life and work.  Tooth extraction is often required for orthodontic malocclusion, the main reason being to provide sufficient space for the teeth to be extracted so that orthodontic treatment of crowded teeth can be successful. In general, in mild crowding (2-4 mm crowding), limited space can be obtained by enlarging the dental arch. In moderate crowding (crowding of 5-9 mm), most of the space should be obtained by extraction. In the case of severe crowding (crowding of 10 mm or more), tooth extraction is necessary to obtain sufficient clearance for successful orthodontic treatment. It is generally accepted that for every 1 mm of inward retraction of the anterior segment toward the palate, 2 mm of clearance within the dental arch is consumed. Therefore, errors with anterior protrusion and no space in the arch must also be extracted to obtain orthodontic clearance for successful treatment.  Orthodontic extraction is a step that must be taken to correct some errors, from hundreds of years abroad, decades of orthodontic history in China, orthodontic extraction is generally not significantly harmful. Because the orthodontist in the orthodontic extraction is preferred to the diseased teeth and the teeth with the least impact on the chewing function, and only one or two teeth in the upper jaw, lower jaw, patients generally do not feel the loss of chewing power. Moreover, the chewing efficiency is enhanced by the treatment. Therefore, orthodontic tooth extraction that is both aesthetic and functional is beneficial and not harmful, so please do not worry.