I wanted to let everyone know that on October 19, 2010, at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D.C. there will be a so called “Multidisciplinary Conference on Third Molars.”
This meeting will consist on an invitation-only audience. This event is being organized by the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS). Those who will be in attendance include dental, medical, governmental, and third party organizations. I wonder if I will be receiving an invitation however I doubt it due to the nature of the meeting and its intent to promote the removal of healthy impacted wisdom teeth due to so called “accurate and true evidence based research.”
Since I now reside near the D.C area I may try to attend the conference to see what is being discussed and to make sure that accurate results are being presented and discussed.
The program of the conference includes the following (bullets below) as stated in Ira D. Cheifetz’s In My View Section on page 2 of the AAOMS Today Volume 8, Issue 5, September/October 2010 issue.
- “Quantifies the issue of third molars in terms of the number of patients who have retained asymptomatic third molars, and the costs associated with managing those patients.”
- “Considers the nature of third molars: are they different than other teeth; how predictable is their behavior over time; and is there pathology associated with asymptomatic third molars?”
- “Discusses the risks accompanying the removal of asymptomatic third molars. Does timing, for example, affect the incidence and severity of complications, or the patient’s recovery?”
- “Examines the long-term consequences of third molar removal.”
After the Multidisciplinary Conference on Third Molars a press conference will take place. The intent of the press conference is to provide media with a chance to write articles and perhaps discuss on a TV news segment the potential problems with leaving healthy impacted wisdom teeth in hence why they should be removed.
The intent of this Conference is clearly to urge parents and teenagers/young adults who are considering oral surgery to have those wisdom teeth removed that are impacted.
The reason for AAOMS having this Conference stems from the fact that in 2008 the American Public Health Association (APHA) released an article titled “Opposition to Prophylactic Removal of Third Molars.” This article is viewable for your convenience on my website http://www.teethremoval.com/Opposition_to_Prophylactic_Removal_of_Third_Molars_wisdom_teeth.html.
Dr. Thomas B. Dodson states in a June 2009 letter to the editor in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery http://www.joms.org/article/S0278-2391%2809%2900068-8/abstract that the American Public Health Association “cherry picked published fact and ignored the context and intent of many authors cited.” Hence AAOMS agrees with Dr. Dodson’s assessment and feels the policy statement by the APHA is flawed.
I feel my website does a good job presenting other information besides just the “Opposition to Prophylactic Removal of Third Molars” article and APHA policy statement. For example as clearly stated on http://www.teethremoval.com/ the British National Institute for Clinical Excellence states “The practice of prophylactic removal of pathology-free impacted third molars should be discontinued. . . . There is no reliable evidence to support a health benefit to patients from the prophylactic (preventative) removal of pathology free impacted teeth.” In addition, I clearly address the serious complication of a constant 24/7 headache I have had since 2 days after having all four of my healthy impacted wisdom teeth removed over 4 years ago. My website addresses other serious complications such as brain damage, stroke, and even death that has occurred in young adults upon having their wisdom teeth removed.
I also encourage you to review a letter I previously sent to AAOMS members back in January https://blog.teethremoval.com/american-association-of-oral-and-maxillofacial-surgeons-aaoms-contact-information-and-request/.In the letter I urge AAOMS to make proper recommendations regarding third molar removal in the United States based on evidence based medicine.
I have not seen AAOMS address the reasons for the British National Institute for Clinical Excellence recommendation and why AAOMS’s recommendation is completely opposite.
In addition, AAOMS is not providing any real evidence based research to suggest that removing healthy impacted wisdom teeth in your younger years is more beneficial than not removing them and keeping a watchful eye on them and then removing the wisdom tooth or teeth that are causing problems down the road. They lead you to believe that their Third Molar White Paper does a good job showing the evidence based research http://www.aaoms.org/docs/third_molar_white_paper.pdf but it is severely lacking in numerous areas and proper scientific studies and assessments.
The first aim and last aim of the Multidisciplinary Conference can really be summed up by the following. As a teenager / early 20’s year old person wouldn’t you rather have the younger years of your life healthy compared to the possibility that instead if you elect to have your wisdom teeth extracted you could suffer a complication perhaps a serious one and be left with that for the rest of your life. Where as instead, if you have suffer a complication later in your life when in fact your wisdom teeth are causing problems and need to be removed than you would have lived with that complication for a shorter duration of your life.