Video: Should I Keep or Remove Wisdom Teeth?

There are many different reasons why you should keep your wisdom teeth and a similar number of reasons why you should have them removed.   

Now, wisdom teeth to dentists are called third molars. So, wisdom teeth are the same as third molars. So, if you hear the term “third molar,” those are interchangeable.   

There are a couple of reasons that immediately ring true to me. If you have a wisdom tooth that’s coming through the gum tissue, it’s just stuck and not going to move anymore; it can cause some type of gum infection in that area. You may even have had this type of scenario where you can bite on your gums, or there’s food that can get in there. You barely see the tooth peeking through the gums, almost like when you’re teething. When you’re a toddler, or if you have children, you can see it just peeking through the gums, but it never quite comes out; it can create an environment where you can have a gum infection, and we call that operculum. It can be difficult to clean, and that’s a major issue. You can have a lot of pain and a pretty good infection. That’s the reason in general why we should remove these.  

If they’re going to interfere more than they’re going to help- think about it like that- Are your wisdom teeth or your third molars going to interfere more than they’re helping?