Understanding Impacted Teeth  and What  Wisdom Teeth Are?

(Part 2) 

Impacted Teeth

Causes of Impacted Tooth

Wisdom teeth can accidentally suffer from impaction depending on how much room your jaw has. If your jaw lacks room, it will not be able to do a full-fledged eruption, thus it remains under the gums or causes nearby molars to shift.

A fully impacted wisdom tooth is when it never breaks or erupts from the gums at all. A partially impacted wisdom tooth is when part of its crown breaks through, but the rest are hidden.

Wisdom teeth usually erupt around the age of 17 years old to 26 years of age, hence it allegedly being the last molars that appear during your age of adulthood or wisdom.

It’s unable to develop in the normal way, so it instead peeks out in an unusual way, like when you try to force a square peg into a circular hole or a circular peg into a square hole that doesn’t quite fit.

Some people have wide enough room to allow the wisdom teeth to erupt normally without any problems or impactions, leading to a perfect line of teeth from top to bottom.

Symptoms of Problematic Impaction

In most cases, the human mouth is too crowded with teeth to allow for the eruption and development of third molars, resulting in partial or full impaction.

These crowded wisdom teeth may partially emerge such that some of the crown or the top of the shell is visible from the gums.

They can also not emerge at all but push at the second and first set of molars, resulting in dental pain and gum sensitivity. However, the presence of molar impaction does not always cause symptoms or complications.

When the tooth hits a nerve or causes an infection, puts pressure and damage to neighboring teeth, or causes various complications, expect the following to happen:

  • Jaw pain
  • Radiating headache
  • Swollen or red gums
  • Bad breath or halitosis
  • Edema around the jaw area
  • Pain or swelling of your face
  • Bleeding gums with tenderness
  • An unpleasant aftertaste inside your mouth
  • It’s hard to open your mouth or jaw all the way

You should see a dentist if you’re already getting that ache in the area behind your last molar. Get help ASAP because the longer the infection happens, the more complications you’ll be dealing with down the line.

Furthermore, it’s not so simple to extract an impacted wisdom tooth, so you better save up or talk to your dental insurance provider about the extent of your coverage. (To be continued)