What Rexburg Patients Need to Know Before Choosing
If you are hurting right now, that comes first. Call and let us get you comfortable before anything else gets decided. At Strobel Family Dental, a father and son have this conversation every week. It is the hardest one in general dentistry, and the most rushed. Dr. Dirk Strobel graduated from Creighton University School of Dentistry in 1985. He has practiced here for over 40 years. Dr. Heber Strobel graduated from Louisiana State University School of Dentistry. He received the 2023 Hanau Best of the Best Excellence in Prosthodontics Award.
About seven in ten patients want the tooth saved at a fair price. The other three want it out, quickly and cheaply. Neither group is wrong, and nobody here treats one as the good answer. Wanting it gone cheaply is a legitimate position. So is fighting to keep a tooth you have had since you were twelve. Every restorative dentistry plan at Strobel Family Dental starts from what you can actually do. Your budget is a clinical factor, not a character flaw. Nobody gets a lecture here about a tooth they waited on. People wait for reasons that make sense to them.
Why Extraction Looks Cheaper Than It Is
Pulling a tooth costs less today. That part is true and nobody should pretend otherwise. A simple extraction runs a few hundred dollars in most places. Published ranges put it well under a root canal, and that gap is real. A root canal with a crown runs several times that. If money is tight this month, the cheaper column is loud. That is a real pressure and we take it seriously.
The math changes once you ask what happens next. Delta Dental puts a root canal near $1,200 to $1,500 out-of-network. An extraction costs less than that today. What it does not cover is the tooth that has to replace it. A gap does not stay a gap for free. Replacing that tooth later costs more than saving it would have today. The bill did not vanish. It moved into a year you have not budgeted for yet.
What the Gap Actually Costs You
An extracted tooth leaves a space, and spaces do not sit still. The teeth beside it lean toward the opening over time. Teeth hold each other in place, and one missing tooth loosens that whole arrangement. The tooth above or below it drifts down into the empty room. Your bite changes, and your chewing changes with it. None of this happens overnight. It happens slowly enough that most people never connect it back.
Bone is the quieter part of this. Chewing pressure through a root keeps the jawbone around it alive. Take the root away and that signal stops. The ridge slowly narrows in the months and years afterward. This is exactly why a dental implant placed years later sometimes needs a graft first. The site narrowed while you were not looking. Fewer than 20 percent of our implant patients need one. Time is the main reason any of them do.
