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Why Have Wisdom Teeth Removed
Why do Wisdom Teeth need to come out?
For oral surgeons the most common procedure is impacted wisdom teeth. This is a common problem affecting 75% of the population. But there are many misconceptions in the population concerning wisdom teeth. Many people believe that all wisdom teeth must come out and then again there are those people who aren’t aware of the dangers of wisdom teeth at all.
Wisdom teeth are the last molar teeth to come in. One in each quadrant of your mouth, lower right, upper right, lower left, upper left. Technically they are third molars. The first molars arrive in your mouth around age 6 being nicknamed the 6 year molars. The second molars come in around 12 years old and carry a nickname similarly. Third molars or wisdom teeth have a variable arrival time in the mouth anywhere between the age of 13 and 27. Most are to come in around age 18. Thusly they were named wisdom teeth, because it was at that age when young men and women were assumed to arrive at a new level of wisdom.
The purpose of wisdom teeth just like any other molars, are to chew the food we eat. The wisdom teeth, it seems, were actually intended to fit into the mouth as we lost other teeth or as the other teeth wore down. But most people don’t lose other teeth and because our diets are refined we don’t wear down our teeth as much as our ancestors did. The problem with wisdom teeth is most of the time wisdom teeth do not fit in the mouth in a healthy way. What I mean by that is that they are unable to attain a healthy position in the mouth the way teeth normally do. That position being with the gums around the neck of the tooth. In other words the crown would be in the mouth, the neck of the tooth would have gums around it and the root would be into the jaw bone. When the teeth are in this healthy position the bacteria that populates our mouths is kept from getting down into the deeper spaces of our body because the gums create a seal around the neck of the tooth. If the gums were rising high on the crown of the tooth they would not be able to make that seal. That’s because the crown is covered with enamel that’s the pearly white stuff you see when you smile. The enamel is hard and slippery like glass and the gums just don’t stick to it they can’t make that seal when they are up around the crown of the tooth. All this information is important if you understand that many times wisdom teeth can’t attain that healthy position. They come in a little bit but they can’t get the gums around the neck of the tooth. Or they come in sideways and break the seal between the gums and the tooth in front of them. In either one of these cases the bacteria is able to get down into the tissue and create an infection. Infection is the number one reason for removing wisdom teeth.
A different type of infection is a cavity. A cavity in the wisdom tooth or in the adjacent tooth caused by the malposition (or poor position) of the wisdom tooth is another common problem with wisdom teeth. Next on our list of problems with wisdom teeth is cyst formation. If the crown of the wisdom tooth is never able to come into the mouth, then that crown deep in the jaw bone can have a cyst created around it. That’s because all teeth start deep in the jaw bone and they have a follicle around them when they are formed. This little follicle is a tiny sac that helps them erupt into the mouth. That’s when they break through the gums and come in. If the tooth never breaks through the gums to come in then that follicle can enlarge and create a cyst. The cyst is very slow growing you don’t feel it but it can be very destructive. As it grows it replaces your jaw bone with a fluid filled sac. If it gets big enough it can weaken your jaw bone, move other teeth and even break through the gums itself and get infected. There’s many more reasons to get wisdom teeth out in fact there’s 18 more that I can think of but we don’t need to go into all of these. The bottom line is that wisdom teeth often don’t fit in the mouth and should come out. The way to judge this is to get an x-ray of the teeth and the jaw and have your dentist evaluate them. It may not sound like a very important thing but actually taking care of impacted wisdom teeth can save you a lot of trouble.
In the early days of medical knowledge there was a disease known as Ludwig’s Angina. This was a life threatening swelling of the neck, tongue and throat. At the time they did not know what it was caused by. Now we know that it’s caused by infections from wisdom teeth. Yes, wisdom teeth can cause life threatening infections, even today with modern day antibiotics. In the last 5 years I’ve probably seen about 5 cases, but each one of them was extremely serious and their prognosis was guarded. The statistics today show that if someone were to get Ludwig’s Angina their chance of dying from it is 8%. I’m not trying to scare you but the consequences of malpositioned impacted wisdom teeth are serious and the wisest thing to do would be to get them checked out by a professional.