How To Deal With Your Impacted Teeth
When a tooth becomes impacted, it means that instead of erupting as it should
, the tooth has gotten stuck in the bone. According to Dr. A. Gerald Michels, a family dentistry specialist in San Diego, California, who is in practice at Hillcrest Family Dental Care, if someone says he has an impacted tooth, he is almost always going to be talking about a wisdom tooth.
In the world of general dentistry, the term oral surgery is usually used when referring to the removal of one or more teeth. You also have some oral surgeons who are maxillofacial surgeons who do implants and can work on your sinuses. But as general dentists, we call oral surgery the removal of teeth.
Reasons Why Oral Surgery Is Recommended
Unfortunately, for people who have a fear of surgery, there are very few options for dealing with an impacted tooth beyond having oral surgery to remove the tooth. The only other common option is to simply leave it alone. While it is the patients choice whether or not to have impacted teeth removed from the mouth with sedation and oral surgery, a dentist in San Diego is most likely to recommend that course of action over leaving the impacted teeth in the mouth.
Impacted teeth that are left unattended to will exert a forward pressure on the other teeth in the mouth, causing the front teeth to become more crowded or crooked in some cases. For people who previously wore braces or had orthodontia treatments, having one or more impacted teeth that push on the mouth can undo all the work that was previously done by an orthodontist.
In addition to dental alignment, there is another reason why a dentist in San Diego is likely to recommend oral surgery and sedation to patients with impacted wisdom teeth. It turns out that when a wisdom tooth is only partially erupted, there is usually a layer of tissue that remains over the top of the impacted tooth. Because this layer of tissue gets in the way, the tooth can be very difficult to keep clean. Having a tooth that is difficult to keep clean can lead to infection, which is the last thing anyone would want to happen in his mouth. So most of the time, we recommend taking them out.
Cases Where Impacted Teeth Are Left
Just like anything else in life, there are some people whose impacted teeth will crowd the mouth and cause pain, and some whose impacted teeth will hardly be noticed at all. If you took a group of 10,000 individuals with impacted wisdom teeth, some would have trouble and pain and some would not. So it is important to note that oral surgery is not always required to fix wisdom teeth in every single case.
Although oral surgery is the most common course of action, there are some rare cases when a wisdom tooth can erupt in proper alignment. In those cases, as a dentist, I would recommend my San Diego patients avoid the sedation and oral surgery and just leave them alone.
If you have impacted teeth but do not want oral surgeryeither out of fear of the surgery or for another reasonthen you can always have the impacted teeth left in your mouth. I have my wisdom teeth, and I am 60 years old. They have never bothered me. They have always stayed where they are and they have never caused me any trouble.
Causes of Impacted Teeth
The course of treatment for an impacted tooth is fairly defined, but the causes of an impacted tooth are less easy to pinpoint. When it comes to impacted teeth, no amount of brushing or flossing can prevent the problem from occurring. Teeth become impacted due to the way they are erupting or growing into the mouth, which has nothing to do with how well someone keeps up his oral hygiene regimen.
While many patients are willing to deal with the dull and achy pain that comes with impacted teeth, some are not. Especially for teenage patients who have already gone through orthodontics in the past, having impacted teeth removed is usually the more commonly recommended course of action to prevent any crowding from taking place. So it is a question of whether youre getting them when you are young, and whether one of them is bothering you.
The information in the article is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your healthcare provider. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with an appropriate healthcare provider.
by: A. Gerald Michels
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