Do “wisdom teeth” cause crowding?
It is a very common occurrence in the orthodontic office when a patient or parent comes in to say that, “My wisdom teeth made my lower front teeth crowd up.” This theory is made even more attractive by an image on a panoramic x-ray which sometimes shows the patient’s third molars (“wisdom teeth”) tilted forward, apparently, “pushing” on the rest of the lower teeth. Even though such a theory seems like a common-sense reason for crowding of the lower front teeth, research that has been done through the years does not consistently back up such a belief. An article distributed by the American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) several years ago seems to go against this theory (Orthodontic Dialogue Vol. 11, Number 1, Spring, 1999).
