Understanding Impacted Teeth
and What Wisdom Teeth Are?
(Part 4)
Let us continue with our discussion of impacted teeth and wisdom teeth.
Soft Tissue Impaction vs. Hard Tissue Impaction
Your dentist might call the impaction a “hard tissue” or “soft tissue” one. What do those technical terms usually mean? Here’s the gist.
- Soft Tissue Impaction: The tooth has erupted from the jawbone—they’re developed and stored there until they erupt into the gums—but they remain impacted underneath the gum line.
- Hard Tissue Impaction: The tooth is partially or fully covered by the jawbone and gums. It hasn’t erupted from its sac inside your jawbone where it’s supposed to be stored.
Both milk teeth and permanent teeth are stored in the jaw and erupt one by one as the baby grows up and develops their jaw.
The milk teeth are temporary and replaceable by permanent teeth that cannot be replaced naturally once they’re extracted, knocked off by blunt-force trauma, fallen off due to tooth decay, or lost somehow.
What are the Different Positioning Types of Impacted Wisdom Teeth?
Aside from partial, full, and non-impacted wisdom teeth, there are four other categories of impacted wisdom teeth according to their tooth positioning.
- Mesial Impaction: This is the most common impaction type. It happens when the wisdom tooth is placed at an angle where it’s facing towards the front of the mouth.
- Distal Impaction: This is the rarest type of impaction. This is when your third molar is placed at an angle where it’s facing towards the back of your mouth instead (the opposite of mesial).
- Vertical Impaction: Vertical impaction is when your wisdom teeth erupt the normal way teeth are supposed to erupt (upwards), but it ends up partially or fully trapped beneath the gums (or jawbone).
- Horizontal Impaction: When your third molar is lying on its side, trapped between gums, its root and crown placed on the left and right instead of on the top and bottom. They place painful pressure on any teeth in front of them.
The positioning and level of impaction of the wisdom teeth will determine how they’ll be extracted. A dental surgeon is called for because there will be surgery or cutting through the gums involved.
There might even be a need to cut through the teeth and jawbone as well depending on how impacted the molar is or molars are. It’s usually more complicated than simply pulling or extracting a normally erupted tooth.
Risk Factors and Complications of Impacted Teeth
You’re more at risk of getting your wisdom teeth impacted depending on the amount of space on your mouth and jaw. Crowded teeth can also serve as blockages that keep those molars from erupting normally.
Once your wisdom teeth end up impacted, this could cause several dental and oral issues, which includes the following.
- Neighboring Teeth Damage: If the third molar pushes against the second molar, it may damage the neighboring tooth or raise the infection risk around that area when push comes to shove.
The pressure from the erupting but impacted tooth can cause problems such as teeth crowding, thus necessitating orthodontic treatment to correct and straighten out multiple teeth at the same time.
- Cavities and Tooth Decay: Impacted third molars seem to have a higher chance of decaying and developing cavities compared to other non-impacted teeth. It’s all because of their awkward positioning and angle makes them harder to clean.
A veritable Petri dish of bacteria could develop between gum flaps or partial impactions due to trapped rotting food getting stuck there. It’s more of an issue with partially impacted molars than fully impacted molars though.
- Cyst Development: Impacted molars develop in sacs within the jawbone. Such sacs can fill up with fluid, which form into cysts that can cause jawbone damage and issues with neighboring teeth and nerves when all is said and done.
Although it’s a rare occurrence, there is a very real risk of a tumor developing from such cysts. This tumor is usually of the non-cancerous or benign variety. However, resolving them still involves removing bone and tissue.
- Gum Disease: Because it’s hard or impossible to clean impacted wisdom teeth, you might end up with inflamed gums while they remain impacted. Surgery must be done to remove them to prevent the inflammation from worsening.
Partially erupted wisdom teeth you can’t clean can cause the painful inflammatory gum condition known as pericoronitis. The best way to resolve such an issue is to surgically remove the tooth or teeth in question. (To be continued)