In this article, I would talk about the necessity of removing impacted wisdom tooth and I will show one of my recent cases relating to the impacted wisdom tooth.
Typical adult has 32 teeth and four of them are wisdom teeth located at the most posterior area of the dental arch. Often these wisdom teeth don’t come in until a person’s late twenty years old. Even though they don’t seem to cause any pain, it is recommended to have the wisdom teeth extracted for preventive purpose.
It is generally difficult to clean the wisdom teeth because it is located at the most posterior region of the mouth. Sometimes, the wisdom teeth can grow sideways. Detanlly we called them impacted wisdom teeth. If the wisdom teeth are impacted, food and bacteria can accumulate around the wisdom teeth because food is more likely to get caught in between the wisdom tooth and the tooth in front of it. If left ignore, continual jamming of food will allow bacteria to grow and causes tooth decay, on the wisdom tooth and also on the tooth in front of the wisdom tooth.
I have this patient come in with the toothache. Upon examination of Xray, we can see that the impacted wisdom tooth causes severe decay on the tooth in front of it. The decay has already progressed onto the nerve chamber of the tooth.
So in order to treat her dental problems, I would perform surgical removal of the wisdom tooth and for the damaged tooth, I would remove all decay, perform root canal therapy, buildup the tooth and follow by the crown.
The main reason why the decay has progressed is because the patient does not have the habit of going to see the dentist for routine checkup, and also follow through the previous dentist’s recommendation of extracting the wisdom teeth.
Often the type of dental problem created by the wisdom tooth can be difficult to address because the decay can be very deep and dental restoration may not be able to be placed to restore the tooth. Luckily, in the above case, the decay has not compromise the structural integrity of the tooth and I was able to restore the tooth.
Written by Daniel Tee, DDS, MS
Practicing General Dentist Serving the city of Tempe, Chandler, Phoenix, Gilbert, and Mesa in Arizona.
