January 6, 2016

Impacted Wisdom Tooth and Pericoronitis


How was your holiday celebration? I know most of us enjoyed the food served in the table during the Noche Buena and Media Noche. Unfortunately, I haven’t enjoyed much of eating especially during the Media Noche.

Why?

A week before the New Year’s Eve, my wisdom tooth strikes again. My gum is swollen and gives me pain every time I chew. I had an impacted wisdom tooth. Buti nalang, pahupa na ang pamamaga.

Impacted wisdom tooth is when the skin, soft tissue or bone from the jaw covers the tooth. It might be angular, horizontal, vertical or partial. There are instances that this tooth may pop-up one day then goes down the next.

Types of Impacted Wisdom Tooth (Source: Eagle Rock Dental Care)

This is very painful and may cause inflammation of the gum or tissue around the tooth. The swelling of the gum or tissue is called pericoronitis.

Due to pericoronitis, the gum tissue easily holds food particles, debris, air which is a god habitat for bacteria that can lead to infection.

In my case, I have a horizontal type of impacted wisdom tooth.

X-Ray of a Horizontal Impacted Wisdom Tooth (Source: Monterson Family Dental)

Symptoms of having pericoronitis include painful and swollen gum in the affected area, bad smell or taste in the mouth, and discharge of pus from the gum near the tooth. A more serious problem can be indicated by swollen lymph nodes under the jaw or chin area, muscle spasms in the jaw and swelling of the face.

Pericoronitis can be coped by taking antibiotics, swishing warm salt-water, and some pain reliever. However, if bacterial growth continues, recurrence of pericoronitis is highly possible. 

How to treat pericoronitis?

The simplest and easy way to treat this condition permanently is by either removing the gum tissue that covers the wisdom tooth or extracting the wisdom tooth. Extracting the impacted wisdom tooth may need x-ray and surgery.

During the time I already feel severe pain, I already told mommy to visit the dentist and let the wisdom tooth extracted. But I changed my mind since I only had this problem very rare.

Do you also have impacted wisdom tooth? How did you manage it?

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