Most of us think that once our permanent teeth have come in, our dental development is basically done. By and large this is true, with one exception: wisdom teeth.
Wisdom teeth are your third set of molars, and they generally don’t start to come in until the patient is in her late teens or early twenties. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that most of us don’t really have room for our wisdom teeth in our mouths. That is why our Toluca Lake wisdom tooth dentists offer treatment and extractions to help patients avoid wisdom-tooth-related damage.
As your wisdom teeth start to come in, you may notice some unpleasant or uncomfortable symptoms:
- You may feel a sense of tightness or fullness behind your second molars
- Some patients find that their gum tissue around their wisdom teeth becomes sore, red, swollen, and damaged
- You may start to suffer from hard-to-treat bad breath; this is a sign that oral bacteria are colonizing around your wisdom teeth (this is common because wisdom teeth are especially difficult to keep clean)
- You may have pain around your back molars when you bite down or chew
- Your existing dental alignment may start to shift; this occurs because as your wisdom teeth move they put pressure on your smile and cause crowding
The good news is that prompt wisdom tooth extraction can help you avoid these issues, as well as other oral health problems related to third molars. For some patients, extraction simply means that our dentists pull out the wisdom teeth, much as we’d pull any other tooth. For other people, wisdom tooth extraction is surgical, as our dentist must go in to the jawbone tissue in order to remove the tooth.
When you meet with our Toluca Lake wisdom tooth dentists we’ll be able to give you more information about your treatment options, as well as what type of extraction may be appropriate for you. Give us a call to schedule a personal consultation!