alveolar osteitis

The risk factor for alveolar osteitis can dramatically increase with smoking after an extraction.

Alveolar osteitis or "dry socket"

Possible complications include dry socket (alveolar osteitis), infection, bleeding, and numbness, but the overall chance of complications is less than 2% (2 in 100 people).

Dry socket (Alveolar osteitis) is a painful phenomenon that most commonly occurs a few days following the removal of mandibular (lower) wisdom teeth.

Alveolar osteitis is inflammation of the alveolar bone (i.e. the alveolar process of the maxilla or mandible).

This specific type of alveolar osteitis is also known as dry socket or less commonly fibrinolytic alveolitis and is associated with increased pain and delayed healing time.

This leaves an empty socket where bone is exposed to the oral cavity, and causes a localized alveolar osteitis limited to the lamina dura (the bone which lines the socket).

Often the term alveolar osteitis is considered synonymous with "dry socket", but some specify that dry socket is a focal or localized alveolar osteitis.

A dry socket, also known as alveolar osteitis, is a painful inflammation of the alveolar bone (not an infection); it occurs when the blood clots at an extraction site are dislodged, fall out prematurely, or fail to form.

More likely, alveolar osteitis is a phenomenon of painful inflammation within the empty tooth socket because of the relatively poor blood supply to this area of the mandible (which explains why dry socket is usually not experienced in other parts of the jaws).