Signs You Have an Impacted Molar

It is possible to have an impacted tooth, feel no pain, and never know until you visit your dentist Spokane. Teeth most likely to become impacted are the third molars, or wisdom teeth. Expect your wisdom teeth to start showing around the ages of 17 to your early 20s. If placed badly or if your jaw is too short for extra adult teeth, the third molar starts pushing on the second molar, causing pain and damage to the second molar. The third molar can also erupt sideways, towards the jaw, an awkward position that could bruise or tear your gums.

All growing third molars cause pain and discomfort, but people feel it in different degrees. At worse, some experience fever and a throbbing ache on the side of their face. While other report only a mild discomfort. The danger with impacted molars is they can be prone to infection and damage surrounding teeth.

Visit a Dentist

Easiest way to determine if your third molars are coming out nicely is to consult a dentist. Your dentist can do an examination or take a dental X-ray to confirm that your molar is impacted even before it is fully visible on the surface of the gum. Go to your dentist as soon as you start feeling discomfort in your back teeth. It does not have to be severe pain. You can do this as soon as you are in your late teens. Not everybody has wisdom teeth. Most people will have 4, but there are also cases where as much as 8 wisdom teeth erupt. An X-ray will reveal how many wisdom teeth to expect.

Infection Caused By Impacted Tooth

Infection and pain is the most common reason patients visit a dentist for treatment. Impacted molars tend to cause complications when they get infected. They cause swelling at the very back of your teeth where the third molar is supposed to erupt. At this point, your dentist will prescribe you antibiotics and possible soft tissue surgery to clean the infection.

Extracting Impacted Molar

Taking out the molar is the last resort, when pain and infections persist. It can be very difficult to remove an impacted tooth, depending on its position. The root of the third molar is close to an important nerve, and when damaged, can mean you will no longer be able to eat normally. To reduce the risk of damaging nerves, your dentist might only partially remove an impacted tooth, leaving the root untouched. This will ensure it does not push on the second molar, jaw or gum, depending on how it was positioned. The problem with leaving the root or some other tooth fragments is that you might become prone to infections, but this is preferable to risking permanent damage to nerves.

Whatever you and your dentist decide to do with your third molars, make sure that extraction is done before you turn 25 years old. The risks for bone loss after extracting molars increases after the age of 25. If your third molars are in perfect health, consider keeping and maintaining them with proper cleaning instead of early extraction.