National Institutes of Health Wisdom Teeth Study

A new article in the Washington Post is titled “Study may shed light on when it’s appropriate to remove wisdom teeth.”

The article does a good job presenting the evidence (and lack of) for and against removing healthy impacted wisdom teeth. Even so there is apparent bias towards removing wisdom teeth in the article. This is because the article talks about the author’s daughter who had to make a decision regarding removing 2 wisdom teeth. Her daughter ending up deciding to have those 2 wisdom teeth taken out. However, the author (mother) makes it clear that there is no scientific studies to really argue in one direction. Because of this, it is argued, as the American Association of Public Health states “…the removal of wisdom teeth….should be based on evidence of diagnosed pathology or demonstrable need.” This is due to the possible risk of complications that can occur.

In this article in the Washington Post a new study by the National Institutes of Health is briefly mentioned. This study is following 750 patients for 2 years in five states,  when they make a recommendation of either for or against removing a wisdom tooth or multiple wisdom teeth from the patient. This is supposed to help shed light on what sort of complications arise and thus help build an argument for or against wisdom teeth removal.

Personally I think the time period of 2 years is just way too short to appropriately determine evidence. Wisdom teeth that are not taken out in the teenage years can in later life such as 60 or 70 years of age then cause problems. It’s not clear to me what the researchers of the study are hoping to accomplish. However, it will be interesting to see what results emerge from the NIH study.

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