Should I Extract My Impacted Wisdom Teeth?

You’ve gone to your dentist for your routine checkup.  You have no pain, no discomfort in your mouth.  It’s time for you to have some x-rays.  After the dentist evaluates the x-rays, he tells you that you have impacted wisdom teeth and you need to go to an oral surgeon to have them extracted.  What do you do?

You have a lot to consider.  This kind of recommendation is especially made to younger people (usually the recommendation comes before it’s time to go off to college).  It is easier to have wisdom teeth that are impacted extracted when people are younger, because the wisdom teeth roots aren’t fully developed and the dental bone is not as dense as it is in older patients.  If the teeth are easier to remove, then the recovery is easier as well.

An impacted wisdom tooth is stuck under the gum, usually embedded in the jawbone.  Even though you have no symptoms, there are reasons to justify extracting them.  When a wisdom tooth is partially embedded in the gums and part of the crown is exposed in the mouth, there is a pocket between the gums and the tooth and this area can easily get infected.  When this happens, it usually keeps getting infected (this is called a pericoronitis), and this is very painful.  It makes sense to extract a tooth such as this when there isn’t room for the tooth to fully erupt into the mouth.

Other reasons for extracting a wisdom tooth are irreparable tooth decay, an abscess, cysts, tumors, or damage to the nearby teeth or bone.

It usually is advisable to have all four wisdom teeth extracted at the same time if you are going forward with the surgery, because it is usually painful after the procedure, so if you do only one or two extractions and you need others, you may not want to go back, fearing a repeat performance of pain and swelling.  The extractions can be several thousands of dollars at an oral surgeon’s office, and you have to consider, there always is some risk involved in any surgical procedure.  You have to consider how proactive and preventive you want to be to avoid possible problems in the future.

For information about other dental topics visit our website: www.TavorminaDentistry.com

Why Are Regular Dental Checkups Important?

In most cases when there is a problem with our health we feel a symptom in our body. When we get a symptom, such as pain for example, it’s a signal for us to do something about it. Most of us go to the physician to find out what’s going on.  We want to find out what’s causing the pain/problem.

I don’t know why it is this way, but we have seen advanced dental disease in people who never had pain. There were signs and symptoms, but no pain in many instances. This isn’t unusual with dental disease. The signs were bleeding gums, loose teeth, gaps forming between teeth, bad taste or odor in the mouth, discoloration of teeth.  However, without any pain, it is often easy for some people to ignore or be unaware of the signs before it’s too late.

We have seen people with teeth so loose, the teeth come out by themselves – but the person didn’t have pain during the entire time the dental bone holding their teeth in their mouth was being destroyed by infectious bacteria.  We have also seen people with the entire crown of the tooth destroyed by decay, and there never was any pain.

Regular dental checkups are important so that we have an opportunity as dental professionals to find any problems that may be present at the earliest time during the disease process. We want to diagnose gum disease early, before there is any bone loss around the teeth and subsequent tooth loss. We want to discover any decay that might be present before it goes deeper into the tooth, destroys more tooth structure, and continues to enter the nerve of the tooth causing the need for root canal therapy in order to save the tooth. Finding any dental disease early takes less time and money and helps people to maintain their teeth for a lifetime. Dentures are not an inevitable result of aging. They can totally be avoided with regular dental checkups and necessary care when problems are minor.

For information about other dental topics visit www.TavorminaDentistry.com