Jim Du Molin over at The Wealthy Dentist is one of the leading Internet marketing experts for dentists in North America.
He often does surveys and the latest one he has done and shared involves impacted wisdom teeth and their removal. http://www.thewealthydentist.com/SurveyResults/195-Impacted-Wisdom-Teeth.htm
His recent survey of 230 dentists showed the majority (53%) of the dentists surveyed felt that wisdom teeth should usually be removed, but not always. A full 7% said that impacted wisdom always ought to be extracted. On the other side 20% of the dentists surveyed said many impacted wisdom teeth do not need to be removed. Jim also published many comments from the dentists regarding the survey which are available on his website to view if you are interested.
As is clear from teethremoval.com, I go into detail demonstrating how there is no current scientific evidence to support removing healthy wisdom teeth. I go into detail about how there are well over 50 different complications that could potentially occur from having a wisdom tooth extracted. I also show how over 50 people in the past have died as a direct result from having their wisdom teeth removed.
It is not clear to me why some dentists feel impacted wisdom teeth should always be extracted and it is certainly not clear to me why the majority of the survey respondents feel healthy impacted wisdom teeth should usually be removed. Don’t dentists follow the Hippocratic Oath “First Do No Harm”?
Studies have been done on the what happens to healthy impacted wisdom teeth when they are not extracted. Studies have shown that around 36-37% of wisdom teeth that were impacted will later become fully erupted. In addition, less than 1/3 of all people in a few studies had to have at least one wisdom teeth extracted in at least a 5 year follow-up due to symptoms present.
It certainly would be interesting to see a survey of dentists living in the United Kingdom and what they think about impacted wisdom teeth. Healthy impacted wisdom teeth have not been extracted in the United Kingdom for over 10 years.