WISDOM TEETH
A lot of people get problems with their third set of molars. Why? The belief is that our ancestors needed extra teeth because the other ones were quickly worn out due to hard diet. Back then we had wider jaws and we had room for the extra teeth. With time we produced easily eaten food, cutlery and developed smaller jaws. Our wisdom teeth have no longer any use. They will rather create big problems because of no space to erupt or to be cleaned. When no space they can push the other teeth forward when erupting. The bigger problem is when they decide to not erupt straight. They lean in any direction but up. Not coming through the bone means rarely any problems but half out or right under the gums creates a perfect greeding ground for bacteria. In other words high risk for infections or caries and not only for the wisdom teeth. In many situations the neighboring tooth also risks caries or surrounding bone destruction.
When the wisdom teeth are bad positioned or when having caries we often recommend you to extract these. The younger you are when extracting them, the better healing will be seen. When ageing the bone also hardens which sometimes means longer time for an extraction because the surrounding bone has to be removed.
We provide you with normal extraction or operation. In few occasions the wisdom teeth are positioned bad concerning a big nerve in the under jaw which leads us to make a 3D X-ray to exclude the risk of affecting it. If we still see a risk, the hospital will take over the procedure.
What normally determines the procedure to be used is the need of better insight or not. In most cases the tooth is not fully erupted, which usually means that bone have to be removed. We need to reveal the bone for better insight which means operation. For a patient with a straight and fully erupted wisdom tooth including good insight, a normal extraction is done.
