Recovering from oral surgery: what to expect, day by day

What to expect, day by day

You have just had oral surgery, and you are probably feeling tender and unsure what the next few days will bring.

Most of what follows is normal. Knowing which is which is the point of this guide — it saves both unnecessary worry and, more importantly, delayed calls about the things that do warrant one.

This page covers oral surgery generally. For the specific procedures, see how long does it take to recover from wisdom teeth surgery?, what is orthognathic surgery? with what can I eat and drink following jaw surgery?, and caring for yourself and your immediate dentures where a denture was fitted at the time of extraction. What does oral and maxillofacial surgery involve? describes the scope of the specialty, and oral and maxillofacial surgeons is the service page.

Go to hospital, or call 000, if

Before the normal things, the ones that are not. These are a hospital emergency department or 000, not a call to the rooms in the morning:

Swelling in the floor of the mouth and under the jaw can narrow the airway, which is why anything affecting breathing or swallowing is treated as an emergency. An infection that started in a tooth can travel: why are dental abscesses so painful?, what is a tooth abscess? Should I have it treated?, and can a dental abscess affect your general health?

For an urgent dental problem that is not on that list, emergency dentistry covers what can be seen on the day.

Gauze and ice packs

Some procedures mean leaving the practice with gauze packs in your mouth. These should be removed approximately one to two hours after surgery.

Some patients find ice packs applied over the cheeks soothing — and a packet of frozen peas works perfectly well.

Numbness

Various regions of the face and mouth — particularly the lips, tongue and cheeks — will be numb for some hours after the operation.

Be careful to avoid biting these areas during this time.

This warning is not routine caution. A numb lip or cheek gives no feedback at all, and people quite frequently chew the inside of a cheek or a lip without noticing until the anaesthetic wears off and a substantial ulcer appears. It is one of the more common avoidable complications after oral surgery, and children are especially prone to it — see children's dentistry and children's dental emergencies. Why do I bite my cheek after a filling? describes the everyday version, and the cause of mouth ulcers and their usual treatments what to do with the ulcer that results.

Also avoid very hot food and drink while you are numb, for the same reason: there is no warning before a burn.

Swelling

This is a normal response.

It usually peaks 24 to 36 hours after surgery, and is often related to the difficulty of the surgery — more surgical work means more swelling.

It will begin to subside significantly after four to five days.

The practical implication: you will feel worse on day two than on day one. That is expected and is not a sign that something has gone wrong. If you are planning around the recovery, plan for day two being the low point.

Bruising

Bruising may appear as the swelling resolves, and is a common occurrence.

It often shows up later than people expect, and it may track downwards under gravity — appearing along the jawline or neck rather than at the surgical site.

Bleeding

Very common after oral surgery, and it responds well to direct pressure.

If it is troublesome: use the gauze provided, or a knotted handkerchief, to apply pressure to the site of bleeding for one hour.

The word to hold onto is pressure, and the number is one hour. Repeatedly checking whether it has stopped is the usual reason it does not — each check disturbs the clot that is forming. Bite firmly and leave it alone.

Practical tip: place towels over your linen overnight. Small amounts of blood mixed with saliva look far more dramatic than they are.

If bleeding is worrying and persistent, phone reception on 13 13 96 and they will consult with your dentist. Bleeding that will not stop after a full hour of firm pressure is a hospital emergency department matter, as above — particularly if you take a blood thinner. Tell the surgical team beforehand about every medication and supplement you take.

One caution that is easy to miss: gums that bleed spontaneously elsewhere in the mouth, away from the surgical site, are usually gum disease rather than a surgical complication. Bleeding gums and what is gum disease? are the place to start on that — but do not begin flossing an inflamed area during the first week of healing; raise it at the review.

Discomfort

Some degree of discomfort will always occur, to varying degrees.

Take analgesics regularly (not aspirin) soon after the operation — preferably before the numbness wears off.

Both parts of that instruction matter:

Not aspirin, because it affects clotting and can worsen bleeding at the surgical site.

Before the numbness wears off, because pain relief works far better taken ahead of pain than chasing it. Waiting until it hurts means waiting again for the medication to take effect, from a higher starting point.

Over-the-counter pain relief is taken according to the packet, or according to what your surgeon has prescribed. Do not hold aspirin, or any other tablet, against the gum or in the socket. It does not reach the nerve and it burns the soft tissue chemically, leaving a chemical burn on top of a surgical wound. The same applies to neat clove oil.

Be clear about what is on offer here. Discomfort after surgery is managed, not abolished — no procedure of this kind is free of it, and anyone suggesting otherwise is overselling. What is reliable is the pattern.

Most patients are considerably more comfortable after two to three days.

Nausea

Some people feel nauseated after oral surgery — commonly from sedation or general anaesthesia, from swallowed blood, or from taking pain relief on an empty stomach. Sleep dentistry covers what sedation involves and how people usually feel afterwards.

Take analgesics with a little food where the medication allows it, start with clear fluids and move to soft foods as you feel able. It usually settles within the first day. What can I eat and drink following jaw surgery? has a practical list that works for most oral surgery.

If nausea is persistent, or you cannot keep fluids down, phone the practice rather than waiting it out.

Dry socket

The complication most people meet after an extraction. The blood clot in the socket is dislodged, usually by suction or disturbance in the first 48 hours — straws, smoking, vigorous rinsing.

Its signature is distinctive. Pain that had been settling begins to increase from about day three, it is deep and constant rather than sharp, it often radiates to the ear on the same side, and there is frequently a bad taste or odour.

It is treated readily once seen — the socket is cleaned and dressed — but it does not resolve on its own timetable, so ring rather than wait. Smoking is the strongest risk factor; vaping carries the same suction problem. Quitline is 13 7848.

Keeping the mouth clean while it heals

After the first 24 hours, gentle warm salt water rinses — a teaspoon of salt in a glass of warm water, held and tipped rather than swished vigorously. Avoid alcohol-based mouthwash over a healing site: the truth and myths about mouthwashes.

Keep brushing the rest of the mouth normally, with a soft brush, avoiding the surgical site until it is comfortable — which toothbrushes do dentists recommend? and what is the ideal daily routine for oral hygiene?. Some sensitivity in the neighbouring teeth for a few weeks is common: what to do if you suffer from sensitive teeth.

When to call

Phone 13 13 96 if you experience:

Difficulty swallowing or breathing is not on this list, because it belongs on the hospital list at the top of the page.

The general rule is straightforward: discomfort and swelling that peak early and then improve are normal. Anything that starts getting worse again after it had started getting better is worth a phone call.

Common questions

A note on the figures below. The best-studied oral surgical procedure, by a wide margin, is removal of an impacted lower wisdom tooth, so most published rates come from that setting. They are a reasonable guide to surgery of similar difficulty and an overstatement of the risk of a simple upper extraction. Your own surgeon knows which applies to you.

How much time should I actually take off work?

Healthdirect Australia's surgical information on wisdom-tooth removal, last reviewed January 2026, is the plainest Australian guidance on this. You should be able to go home the same day; you should try to leave the wound alone for one to two days; you may need to take up to a week off work; and you should be able to return to normal activities within a week.

Read that week as the outer bound rather than the expectation. A straightforward upper extraction under local anaesthetic often costs a day. A difficult lower tooth, or several teeth at one sitting, is where the week comes in.

Two practical points the timing advice usually leaves out. Plan around day two, not day one, because that is when the swelling peaks. And if you were sedated, the instructions you were given about not driving and having someone with you for the rest of the day are part of the procedure, not a formality — sleep dentistry explains what sedation involves.

How likely is a dry socket, really — and does it mean something went wrong?

More likely than most people are told, and no.

The Cochrane review of surgical techniques for removing lower wisdom teeth (CD004345.pub3, 2020) reports the rates observed in the comparison groups of the trials it analysed: about 132 per 1,000 — roughly 13 per cent — at one week in one set of comparisons, and 205 per 1,000, about 20 per cent, in another. Those are rates in ordinary, competently performed surgery.

So a dry socket after a difficult extraction is a recognised complication, not evidence of a mistake. Cochrane also found that the surgical choices you might expect to prevent it largely do not — closing the wound fully versus leaving it partly open made no clear difference (RR 0.99, 95% CI 0.41 to 2.40, low-certainty evidence). What happens in the first 48 hours, covered above, remains the part anyone can influence.

Should I be taking antibiotics to prevent infection?

Not automatically, and if you were not given any, that is a defensible clinical decision rather than an oversight.

The 2021 Cochrane review of antibiotics given to prevent complications after tooth extraction (CD003811.pub3) pooled 23 trials, 21 of them wisdom-tooth removals. It found that antibiotics may reduce infection after removal of an impacted wisdom tooth by around 66 per cent — but expressed as people rather than percentages, that means 19 people need to be treated with antibiotics to prevent one infection (95% CI 15 to 34), and 46 treated to prevent one dry socket. Both findings are low-certainty evidence, so the honest verb is ‘may reduce', not ‘reduces'.

What the same review found no evidence for is just as useful. In its own words: We found no evidence that antibiotics prevent pain, fever, swelling, or problems with restricted mouth opening in patients who have had wisdom teeth removed. Cochrane's conclusion is that the decision should be made patient by patient, on clinical circumstances and level of risk, explicitly because of antimicrobial resistance. It also notes that all but one of the included trials studied healthy people in their twenties, so none of it speaks directly to someone whose immunity is compromised — a group the review says needs an individualised approach.

My lip, chin or tongue is still numb. Is that permanent?

Almost certainly not — but the timeline matters, and so does telling someone now rather than mentioning it at the next check-up.

This risk belongs to lower teeth, where two nerves run close to the surgical field. For the inferior alveolar nerve, which supplies the lip and chin, a review in the Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Research (2014) puts overall injury at about 2.5 per cent per tooth removed — and, more usefully, shows the risk tracking how close the tooth sat to the nerve on the radiograph: 0.8 per cent where the nerve was classed as distant, 0.9 per cent where it was close, and 11 per cent where the relationship was described as intimate. That is the number worth asking about before surgery rather than after. Permanent injury — altered sensation lasting beyond six months — is reported at under 1 per cent, and the same review found that 96 per cent of these injuries recover within four to eight weeks.

For the lingual nerve, which supplies the tongue and taste, an Australian-authored meta-analysis in PLOS ONE (2023) found temporary injury in 1.2 to 2.4 per cent of cases depending on the surgical technique used, and permanent injury in 0.07 to 0.28 per cent.

Healthdirect's position is that such damage is usually temporary, but that full recovery can take up to 18 months. The reason to report it early is the other side of that recovery figure: the 2014 review notes that where sensation has not resolved by about two months, the probability of a lasting deficit rises significantly. Numbness is not something to wait out politely.

I cannot open my mouth properly. Is that expected?

Usually, yes. Restricted opening — trismus — and jaw stiffness appear on Healthdirect's list of recognised complications of wisdom-tooth surgery. It is a mechanical consequence of operating near the muscles that close the jaw, and it eases as the swelling does.

The distinction that matters is what it comes with. Stiffness that is easing, alongside swelling that peaked and is now settling, is ordinary healing. Restricted opening that is getting worse, or that arrives with fever, spreading swelling, difficulty swallowing or a change in your voice, belongs on the emergency list at the top of this page. Australian guidance on assessing dental infection treats limited mouth opening as a specific indicator of a threatened airway — the assessment question set out in the Australian Journal of General Practice is whether the patient can open more than 2 cm between the incisors. That is why it sits here rather than under nuisances.

They left a root fragment behind. Is that a mistake?

Sometimes it is the plan.

Healthdirect lists retained roots as a recognised outcome of wisdom-tooth surgery, describing it as cases where it is not possible to remove the whole tooth or the dentist decides it is safer to leave a root fragment in place. Where a lower wisdom tooth sits against the nerve, deliberately removing only the crown and leaving the roots is a named procedure — coronectomy — which Healthdirect lists among the surgical alternatives to full removal.

The evidence behind that choice is narrow but consistent on the point it is chosen for. A systematic review in the Journal of Dental Research (2012) pooled four controlled studies and found nerve injury substantially less frequent after coronectomy than after total removal (RR 0.11, 95% CI 0.03 to 0.36), with no difference detected in post-operative infection or in pain at one week. A later meta-analysis in Medicina Oral Patología Oral y Cirugía Bucal (2016) reported that the retained fragment migrates on average about 2 mm within two years — which is why a coronectomy normally comes with a plan to review it on a radiograph rather than a discharge.

What none of that supports is treating a retained fragment as automatically fine. Ask whether it was intended, and what the follow-up is.

Why did they ask whether I had ever taken bone or cancer medication?

Because of osteonecrosis of the jaw — a rare condition, described by Healthdirect, in which bone tissue in the jaw begins to die and the socket does not heal properly. Healthdirect is explicit that you should tell your dentist if you are taking, or have ever taken, cancer medication or bone medication such as bisphosphonates, because these increase the risk.

‘Have ever taken' is the phrase to notice. A medication stopped years ago still belongs on the history. This is one reason the medical history is asked again at a surgical appointment rather than read off the file, and it is worth answering fully even where the question seems to have nothing to do with your teeth.

Related reading

Practical details

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000 — getting here. Phone 13 13 96, contact us, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment. Published fees are in the price guide.

Specialist registration can be verified on the AHPRA register, or by calling 1300 419 495. The practice's registered specialists are identified as such within the full team.

Published 19 February 2016. Recovery varies between individuals and between procedures — the specific instructions given to you by your treating surgeon take precedence over this general guide. General information only; it does not replace advice from your treating practitioner.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.

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