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Impacted Tooth and its History
You must know the meaning of wisdom
teeth, impacted teeth and their classifications since
they are the problem-causers most of the time. Wisdom teeth come under
molar teeth, which represent the chewing ones found farthest into the
back of the mouth. Almost all humans possess first, second and third molars.
The third molars are the wisdom teeth. They are found behind the second
molars and develop mostly during the late teenage or early twenties. Only
if they have sufficient room, they are aligned properly. A person will
develop four wisdom teeth namely lower left, lower right, upper left and
upper right.
An impacted tooth normally means one which has been unsuccessful in its
full emergence from the expected position. The emergence problem might
occur owing to insufficient room in the person’s jaw for accommodating
the tooth or improper angulation of the tooth.
Since it is the wisdom tooth, which occurs always after the emergence
of all other teeth, it is normal for those teeth to find insufficient
space. Hence impacted teeth normally refer to the wisdom teeth in most
of the cases.
Dentists normally employ specific terminologies to explain the positioning
of impacted wisdom teeth. There are four common types of impacted wisdom
teeth, namely the mesial, vertical, horizontal and distal types. Among
all these, mesial is the common one occurring in most of the people. It
refers to the tooth being angled forward, in the direction of the front
of the mouth.
In addition to the above wisdom
teeth classification, other classification exists. Wisdom
teeth can be grouped as soft tissue or bone impactions. Soft tissue impaction
refers to the upper portion of the wisdom tooth being pierced through
the bone yet not erupted completely from the gums. Bone impaction refers
to the tooth being completely encased in the bone.
The reason behind the impaction of some wisdom teeth is still not very
obvious. The primary reason is just there is not enough room at the back
of the person’s second molar teeth. The reason behind the lack of space
is not quite understood. Nevertheless, an association seems to exist between
size of the tooth, tooth crowding and the occurrence of impaction.
Theoretically, it has been proved that the coarse nature of the diet
during the stone age period had resulted in the production of extensive
tooth wear on the chewing tooth surface as well as on the sides such that
the neighboring teeth do not contact each other.
The net effect of the tooth wear will be a decreasing collective length
of the teeth on the whole, thus forming enough space for the accommodation
of wisdom tooth when they start to erupt. When this is compared to the
modern diet, this tooth wear is not significantly produced.
The net result that is obvious from the above discussion is that there
is a requirement for more activity by the chewing muscles. This activity
had been the stimulating factor for the creation of the larger jawbone
thus giving enough space for all teeth. Besides, the cavemen’s teeth was
more often broken or lost owing to their threatening nature as compared
to modern man, which stimulates the neighboring teeth to move forward
into the space of the broken tooth and give space for the growing one.
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