Infection 3 weeks after wisdom tooth extraction? Debridement?

I had 4 impacted wisdom teeth removed mid-April. My healing process went pretty smoothly, and I was completely "back to normal" after about 1.5 or 2 weeks. Then one morning out of the blue I woke up with a swollen extraction site near bottom left socket! This was over 3 weeks after the surgery! Naturally I called my oral surgeon and he prescribed antibiotics. It pussed a little bit and then the swelling went down the day after and has been down ever since. In addition to the antibiotics, however, he also scheduled me for a debridement procedure, in which he said he'll be making the same incision and cleaning out the bad clot tissue, and after that it will usually clot correctly. Now I've read a few cases and even know a few people who had infections after their wisdom teeth surgery, but none of them had this surgical "debridement" procedure. Is this common practice? I'm also nervous about the procedure itself which is coming up in a few days. Can anyone make me feel better about this?

Infection 3 weeks after wisdom tooth extraction? Debridement?
Its an unusual way to phrase it, but the practice makes sense.





You had a surgical opening in your body. The surgical opening was closed, and inside it, it got an infection.





Infection causes damage, some of which the body can clean out on its own.





a debridement, means removal of dead tissue.... if you have dead tissue in there, I hope to heck you'd want someone to remove it, or at the very least check it out and confirm whether or not there is dead tissue inside your surgical site.





Your oral surgeon should be able to tell you exactly what he/she expects to find, and exactly how he/she intends to care for it.





Your oral surgeon or their staff can answer your question much better than almost anyone here.
Reply:having an infection this long after tooth removal isn't the norm but it definetly does happen. when it does happen, antibiotics are a must and occasionally debridement surgery does need to happen. its not as bad as you may think - the doc will just give you some sedation and you'll fall right to sleep. you'll wake up with a little bit of pain but nothing like the original procedure. if anything, you'll feel much better afterwards, as the problem will most likely be corrected. the procedure itself is very simple and you'll be just fine :-) don't worry, you're in good hands!