Q:
Via email Fri.February, 12, 2010. Anonymous.
A friend of mine has recently been examined regarding some pain in his jaw that one dentist already misdiagnosed as cavity pain. It turns out that after being examined by specialists at a very good university research hospital that in fact he has some very seriously disoriented wisdom teeth – teeth that are growing horizontally inside the gum and the roots are tangled up with nerves that control feeling in the tongue. They say that operating will very likely cause a loss all feeling in his tongue..for life. That sounds pretty horrible and there seems to be no alternate solution. What advice can you give in a case like this? Is a good surgeon really likely to damage the nerves in this area or are they just ‘speaking cautiously’? Are there any alternative options?
A:
Thank you for the question. First off, I am glad that he has got a second opinion from a specialist, I am assuming the specialist he saw was an oral surgeon. Wisdom teeth unfortunately can form and be impacted (under the jaw either interfering with other teeth or imbedded in the jawbone itself). It sounds like in your friend's case his are horizontally impacted which would then mean they would be moving towards his teeth in front of the wisdom teeth and in near the inferior alveolar nerve. In many cases where the wisdom teeth are impacted in this way they interfere or are intertwined near this nerve, this is when the decision whether to take the wisdom teeth out or leave them in comes to play. It sounds like he is having discomfort with the wisdom teeth and the teeth they are impeding on, in this case the decision to extract them needs to be weighed with the possible side effect of developing paraesthsia (numbness) due to damage to the nerve during the extraction. In some cases this cannot be avoided as the nerve is directly around the wisdom tooth.
I would suggest your friend think about the decision to extract after a thorough discussion with the oral surgeon he is being examined by.
Nathan
Monday, February 15, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
When it comes to your regular, permanent teeth, a tooth extraction only recommended by Dr. Martin Sterling & Associates only after exhausting all possible alternatives, including root canal therapy. Only then will the dentists at our practice seriously consider removing the tooth and preserve the surrounding.
ReplyDelete