There Is Pus Coming Out Of Wisdom Tooth Hole

If there is white pus coming out of your wisdom tooth hole, it means that you have a post-extraction infection. In other words, your wisdom tooth hole got infected during the healing process after the third molar was removed.

You know what all of this means right? You’re going to need to go back to your dentist.

Pus is a sign of infection

If you see pus (purulence) oozing out of the wisdom tooth hole, that is a tell-tale sign that you’ve an infection. According to the CDC, the presence of purulence is sufficient evidence of an active infection.

If you notice any of the above, there is a good chance you’ve got a post-operative infection at the surgical site. A healthy socket does not have any of these!

What is purulence?

Pus is primarily composed of live AND dead neutrophils, which are the immune cells in our body that fights off infections. The fact that our immune cells are active means that you’ve an infection that they’re actively trying to fight off.

If the body is unsuccessful in fighting off the infection and there is no path for drainage, an abscess will develop. In other words, you will swell up and as you may have guessed, that swelling is filled with pus.

Luckily for you, usually after a wisdom tooth extraction there will be a path of drainage so it is unlikely that you’ll swell up. However, it still means that you do need to see your dentist to have this condition treated.

How did wisdom tooth hole get infected?

It’s not unusual for a surgical site to get infected because that is a common complication. Having your wisdom teeth removed is a surgical procedure so it is not an exception to the rule.

Since we weren’t your dentist or surgeon who performed the procedure, we wouldn’t know the exact cause of it. The above are all potential reasons as to how your condition came to be.

There is just one thing that we wish to expand upon and that is if you weren’t given any antibiotics after the procedure.

Weren’t prescribed antibiotics

Believe it or not, the standard of dental care is to NOT give any antibiotics after a routine wisdom tooth extraction. That applies to taking out any other type of tooth in your mouth was well.

Typically the chances for infection after surgical removal of teeth are very low. So low that the dental community thinks that the chances of you developing antibiotic resistant bacteria far exceeds the possibility of an infection.

Due to the chance of getting bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, you’re typically not prescribed any antibiotics. Unfortunately that also means that your chances of getting a wisdom tooth socket infected also increases.

Nonetheless, that is the risk that we all have to take.

How to treat an infected socket

A wisdom tooth socket that has pus coming out of it will need to be treated by a dentist. It cannot be managed with at home care so don’t even try!

What your dentist needs to do:

• Debride the socket and remove all of the infection.
• Place you on antibiotics.

Debriding the socket

Debriding the socket includes scraping the inside walls of the wisdom tooth hole. You will need to be numb for this procedure.

Essentially your dentist will clean all four of the alveolar walls of the tooth socket. They will curette it with a sharp stainless steel instrument. You will feel and hear scraping sounds.

Afterwards they’ll flush out the third molar hole with an antibiotic solution, chlorhexidine.

If there is an abscess forming, this would also be the time that your dentist will drain the infection. That all depends on whether or not the pus is self-draining.

Take antibiotics

You will definitely be given antibiotics after this visit since any sign of purulence is an indication for it. The most common prescription for dental infections would be amoxicillin which is a penicillin.

If you’re allergic to penicillin, the next antibiotic of choice would be Azithromycin or Doxycycline.

Is this condition a dry socket?

In case you were wondering, pus coming out of the third molar hole is NOT a dry socket. A dry socket as its name implies, is a condition where the hole is completely dry.

It is devoid of ALL fluids and that includes pus. There will also be no blood in there either. Although technically the definition of a dry socket is a lack of a blood clot.

But to answer your question, no you do not have a dry socket if you see white pus coming out of the extraction socket. It is an infection though but that isn’t quite the same thing.

Takeaway

If you see or notice white purulence coming out of your wisdom tooth socket, that is a tell-tale sign that it is infected. Don’t panic because the condition is treatable but you will need to return to your dentist sooner than anticipated.