10 Nov
Impacted Teeth
When something isn’t right with our teeth, we feel the pain acutely. At Lifetime Family Dental, we do our best to quickly and gently alleviate the source of our patients’ dental pain. With a capable staff that can help with both cosmetic and general dentistry needs, our goal is to give our patients healthy, bright, and pain-free smiles.
What is an Impacted Tooth?
When a tooth below the surface of the gums is unable to break through, or has only partially broken through the gums, it is called an impacted tooth. Crowding of the teeth or limited space in the bone structure itself are two causes of impacted teeth.
Signs
What are some of the symptoms of having an impacted or partially impacted tooth?
- 1. Pain: Pain is your body’s message to you that something is wrong. If you are experiencing pain in the back of your mouth that won’t go away, it may mean you’ve got impacted wisdom teeth. If untreated, the pain of an impacted tooth can increase and cause radiating pain in nearby teeth.
- 2. Headaches or Jaw Ache: The process of your wisdom teeth trying to break through the surface of your gums can create pressure on your jaw bone. Your jaw bone connects to your head and skull, so impacted teeth can result in pressure headaches and/or tender jaw bones.
- 3. Swelling: In order to compensate for the pain from your impacted tooth, your body may create swelling of the tissues around your tooth. Swelling and redness can start in the gum tissue around the impacted tooth and then spread to your jaw. Your lymph nodes and glands in your neck may also swell, and without treatment infection is a possibility.
If you are experiencing any of the above symptoms, you may be suffering from an impacted tooth. As much as you may want to ignore the symptoms, we encourage you to contact your experienced, friendly dentist at Lifetime Family Dental, and have him take a look at your teeth. To learn more, give our office a call. Here’s to your dental health, and to the best dental care in Gilbert Arizona!
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (11/1/2017) U.S. Army (Flickr)