Wisdom Teeth Removal

Don’t let the fear of painful extractions stop you from getting the dental care you need. Extractions can save your teeth, especially when you need wisdom teeth removed. Our team specializes in comfortable, quick wisdom tooth removal for patients of all ages. While wisdom teeth are often removed in the late teen years through early adulthood, we can also help if your teeth never erupted and need extraction later in life.

Why Do Wisdom Teeth Often Need Removal?

While teens often get the majority of their adult teeth between 12 and 14, wisdom teeth arrive last and can take until 17 or 18 to emerge. Most patients today don’t have the space needed for these extra molars to safely emerge and serve as part of the bite pattern. If the teeth erupt and there’s no space, they can damage the surrounding molars and cause serious pain. Wisdom teeth may not erupt during the normal time period and can cause no problems for years before suddenly shifting and damaging the back molars around them. Wisdom teeth that seem to be causing no problems may nevertheless affect become impacted and the alignment of the smile or lead to an infection that spreads to the jaw. Many dental professionals today recommend removing the third molars, or wisdom teeth, as a preventative measure if they’re not emerging normally and there’s no extra space for them. The wait-and-see approach could lead to damage that’s hard to detect until it has set in.

Symptoms of Wisdom Tooth Impaction

• Ongoing headaches
• Swollen, tender, or reddened gum tissue in the back of the mouth
• Swelling, clicking, and pain in the jaw joint that suddenly sets in
• Jaw pain in general concentrated toward the ears
• Ear aches
• Sensitivity in all the back molars when chewing
• Chronic bad breath with no other cause
• Trouble opening and shutting your mouth
• Swollen lymph nodes with no other infection
• A sour or mildly metallic taste in the mouth.

What You Need to Know About Wisdom Teeth Removal

Understanding this procedure will make it less intimidating and much more approachable if you're anxious.

Is it considered a preventative procedure?

Each year, dentists remove 10 million wisdom teeth in the United States. Over half of those extraction procedures are elective and not emergency treatments. We highly recommend choosing to have your wisdom teeth removed early rather than waiting until you experience pain or infection.

Why not just wait and see with wisdom teeth extraction?

Unlike other types of tooth extraction, wisdom teeth are best removed even if they seem healthy and are emerging on time. First, wisdom tooth extraction is easier, faster, and requires less time to heal from when handled when you’re healthy and younger. Waiting until there’s an infection or there’s at least one impacted wisdom tooth will only cause complications that require more extensive treatment. We recommend removing the wisdom teeth in the late teens to early twenties. Wisdom teeth will not be fully attached at the root to the jaw tissue yet. This makes them easier to remove with a simple procedure. Waiting until the 20s or 30s to get the wisdom teeth removed just makes the process more extensive. However, if you have waited and need help now, don’t delay. We specialize in making the procedure as easy on our patients as possible regardless of age or secondary conditions.

What affects the cost of removal?

Extracting the wisdom teeth will vary in cost depending on how many teeth need an extraction, the anesthesia required, secondary conditions and complications, and your insurance coverage. We’ll discuss what your insurance will cover and the total anticipated cost before the procedure.

What To Expect

• Sedation: We’ll keep you comfortable and pain-free through the extraction with sedation matched to the treatment and your personal preferences.
• Time Frame: Depending on the complexity of the extraction, we should complete it in under an hour, even if four wisdom teeth need removal.
• Recovery: You’ll feel groggy afterward and need someone to drive you home. We’ll send you home with clear aftercare instructions. You can resume your normal routine after a day or two of rest and you should feel completely healed within a few short weeks.

Contact us today here at Princeton Dental Studio for a consultation about your dental health with a focus on your wisdom teeth. A few X-rays can reveal where they are and whether they should be removed promptly with wisdom teeth surgery.

‍