Quote Originally Posted by mookien View Post
The best way to prevent "dry sockets" and to treat them, if they occur, is to rinse your sockets with warm salt water at least a few times a day. Good luck.
Only use the warm salt water if your dentist/oral surgeon says to; it's a common treatment, but there are some dentist who are starting to say "definitely not".

Basically, just do what after care the doc told you to do. I had mine extracted (straight pulled) about year ago now. I got one dry socket (I smoke), and my doc told me to apply clove oil and switch to clove cigarettes/cigars for a week, and it cleared up pretty quick. (Note, he wasn't saying it was ok to smoke, he was saying since I am GOING to smoke to smoke cloves.)

Of course, my oral surgeon listened to me telling him I'm resistant to topical anesthetics. I got about a quadruple dose of xylocaine per site (He reloaded the oral syringe five times for the whole set of injections). Yeah.... about a hour after the surgery it all hit full efficacy, and I sounded like a drunk Elvis for an few hours.