Benefits of keeping wisdom teeth and how to know if you need to remove them?

What are wisdom teeth?

Wisdom teeth are the last teeth that appear to the person at the age of teens when it’s ending or at the beginning of the twenties age and are located at the back of gums behind the rest of the teeth.

Why are they called wisdom teeth?

Usually a person starts getting his permanent teeth at the age of six to the age of 12 years old except for wisdom teeth. Wisdom teeth appear at the age of maturation and growing up young and that’s why the call them so.

How many wisdom teeth do you have?

Most people have four wisdom teeth one at each end of the two gums. However some of them could stay hidden and not grow out of the gingiva so you could have only two, for example.

Wisdom teeth roots: How many?

While the fifth tooth has one root and the sixth and seventh teeth have two root if they are in the lower jaw and three if at the upper jaw, the wisdom teeth roots number could variate widely to have between one and tree roots for each tooth.

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Where are your wisdom teeth?

Wisdom teeth locate at the end of the gums at each side, which means that at each of the four corners of your teeth lines you have one wisdom teeth.

• Upper wisdom teeth shape

The upper wisdom teeth take the shape of a triangular crown with a deep central fossa.

• Lower wisdom teeth shape

At the lower wisdom teeth side the crown tends to have a rounded rectangular shape.

What is the purpose of wisdom teeth?

It was believed that they existed firstly to help the past generations chewing hard items. However it is obvious that they are not essential for teeth function anymore.

What age do wisdom teeth come in?

 Wisdom teeth usually start to appear at the end of teen’s age or at the beginning to middle of the twenties.

What’s wisdom teeth coming in pain duration?

It’s known that wisdom teeth could cause periods of pain from time to time. The pain starts when the patient comes of the teeth growing age. The pain is described is discomfort at the site of the growing teeth that could be accompanied with swallowing and redness. It usually go away from itself and don’t need any medical intervention.

Swollen-face wisdom teeth

Beside the normal wisdom teeth pain they could cause a swallowing in the face. The swollen face is caused by infection in the wisdom teeth when they are impacted and so they could trap food and make it hard to clean, causing infections and as a result they cause a swollen face.

When to get wisdom teeth removed?

Wisdom teeth should be removed when they start to cause serious problems to the patient such as:

• When the pain is no longer tolerable.
• When the teeth cause infections.
• When they crowd the other teeth.
• When there is no place for the teeth to locate in and they get stuck inside the gum.

Do wisdom teeth have nerves?

Every wisdom tooth has two sources of sensation. Two nerves give branches to the teeth to maintain sensation, those nerves are the lingual nerve and the inferior alveolar nerve.

Can wisdom teeth be filled?

If the teeth are located properly in the mouth and not causing any problems then there could be another way to treat them other than surgical removal. The dentist could be able to fill and restore a wisdom tooth just like and other tooth if there is no otherwise.

Crooked wisdom teeth risks

The wisdom tooth when not locating correctly could push against the next tooth causing infections and inflammation in the gum. This could cause a sharp pain in the area as well. It could also crowd the entire line of teeth so an orthodontic treatment is needed to fix the dislocations wisdom teeth would cause.

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Sources: Diamond Head Dental Care, Healthline