Patients request for extractions

Abstract

Think about patient A, a 25-year-old who visits the oral surgeon requesting that all of her teeth be extracted due to a “passion gap” or dental anxiety, among other reasons. The patient has a perfectly sound, but little neglected, dentition. The oral surgeon chooses how to react to the patient’s request and opposes the extraction. Patients frequently ask for their dentist or oral surgeon to remove a few teeth, or even their entire dentition, as in the case of patient A or the popular dental modification known as the “Cape Flats smile” or “passion gap”, which originated in Cape Flats, Cape Town, where people purposefully remove their upper front teeth for cosmetic and other reasons.