Do wisdom teeth really need to come out, or is my dentist trying to hustle me?
A second opinion couldn’t hurt, especially for anything that has the potential to be a massive fuckup/pain in the ass. FTR, my wisdom teeth came in fine, all straight and normal. My jaws have been fucked ever since I was wee, but my dentist said that we should take them out *before* they start to cause problems. I wound up getting some sort of weird abcess thingy (I’m not sure if that’s the correct term, but it was this weird pocket of doom on my gum right at the bottom left tooth) and got them all yanked at the same time since it was easier to do that than just treat the pocket problem (which would them come back later).
Get a second opinion, but if both dentists agree that you have cavities and should have the teeth out, do it. Most people have a hard time getting to their back molars and/or wisdom teeth to brush and floss properly. Also, the absence of pain is no indication that there’s not a problem. My first root canal was due to a tooth that had actually cracked in half–but it didn’t hurt at all. That crown still bothers me a lot, because there’s almost nothing left of the original tooth. I wish I’d taken care of it earlier, but it didn’t hurt so I thought it was no big deal. I got all four wisdom teeth out in my early twenties because if they came in it would mess up all the work my three years of braces had provided. That was a good enough reason for me to take them out. Gum and tooth problems are linked to heart disease. You should be visiting a dentist at least once a year for a cleaning and checkup for that reason alone.
Every dentist I have ever seen has told me I need to get mine taken out, but they don’t bother me so I never did. My teeth are a very tiny bit crowded, I guess, but they are straight. When they were breaking through the gums that was annoying and hurt and I thought, “Well I guess it’s time to go get them removed” but it went away before I could make an appointment with a dentist. I have never had a single cavity or any other problem.
Over lunch the other day with several friends (ages 30something to late 50s), we realized that everyone at the table had declined to have wisdom teeth removed. None regret the decision, though all had some degree of crowding in the front. The extent to which it was noticeable happened (coincidentally? I have no idea…) to correlate with age. The oldest has one tooth that literally got shoved in front of and above all the others. Snaggletoothed. None of us have pain back there, but do have problems keeping those suckers clean. For my part, the jaw bones block the toothbrush from getting back in there far enough. Oh, and the gums were hurting constantly for at least a year or so while they were erupting. During the first 10 years or so, I also was bedeviled by those gum flaps slooooowly receding from the bottom two, because they trapped a lot of gunk underneath. Sometimes a drugstore dental pick was the only thing that could pull stuff out of there. Periodically it’d go beyond a hygiene
I had one wisdom tooth start to develop and was told I would have to have it out before I turned 25. Well, I am 33 and still waiting for it to appear. Other than that, I had no wisdom teeth at all. Suck on that, meatbags! Anyway, wisdom teeth are pretty susceptible to decay. The enamel is often inferior compared to the other teeth. They are also more likely to develop roots that interfere with your sinuses. But, really, there is no reason to have them out if they aren’t causing you problems. I think the question is, does he think they should come out because they are rotting apart or because they are wisdom teeth. I would see another dentist and specifically say you would like to treat them like any other tooth in your mouth.
