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.