oral surgeon

Rare abscess in chewing muscle after wisdom tooth extraction

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An interesting article titled “A Rare Infratemporal Fossa Abscess of the Lateral Pterygoid” appears in Cureus written by B.S. Daines, R. Varman, and J. Cordero (May 27, 2022, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. e25391). The article discusses how a 26 year old man developed an infratemporal fossa abscess in the lateral pterygoid, a masticatory muscle used for chewing, after having a wisdom tooth extraction. The article discusses how the 26 year old man developed facial swelling after having two upper wisdom teeth extracted. He presented with facial swelling on his left side which was accompanied by constant and dull pain localized to the left face with radiation to the left temple and made worse when he opened his jaw. The man also had a low grade fever and his symptoms persisted even with taking oral amoxicillin for one week and … Read more

Surgery Free Wisdom Tooth Bud Ablation Treatment To One Day Replace Surgery?

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An interesting article titled “Fully Guided Tooth Bud Ablation in Pigs Results in Complete Tooth Bud Removal and Molar Agenesis” appears in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery written by Leigh E. Colby and David P. Watson, Vol. 81, Issue 4, pp. 456-466, Apr. 2023, Published Dec. 16, 2022. The article seems to be a follow-up to a prior article discussed on this site in the post “Tooth bud abalation of wisdom teeth may be alternative to surgery in the future“. That study had shown that fully guided microwave tooth bud ablation (3TBA) could be used to successfully remove wisdom tooth tooth buds without damaging surrounding tissues in a study with 5 pigs. The most recent study used a 28-day longitudinal characterization study to determine if healing response following fully guided microwave ablation of tooth buds in pigs would result in … Read more

What is the Estimated Amount of Wisdom Teeth Extractions in the US

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An interesting article titled “Estimated Cumulative Incidence of Wisdom Tooth Extractions in Privately Insured US Patients,” written by Alan R. Schroeder and et. al. appears in Frontiers in Dental Medicine (July 2022, vol. 3, article 937165). The article sought to determine the cumulative incidence and predictors of wisdom teeth extractions in the US. The article was motived by some of the controversy around wisdom teeth extractions and to better provide frequency estimates of the procedure to help inform future quality improvement initiatives and/or clinical trials. The authors used a national dental insurance claims database of privately insured patients (IBM MarketScan Dental Database), to help estimate the incidence of wisdom teeth extractions in the US and to determine variation by sex and geographic region. The authors included all patients in the database for their study who were under 60 years of … Read more

Cinematic and Volume Rendering of the Facial Skeleton CT can aid Visualization

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An interesting article titled “Three-dimensional perception of cinematic rendering versus conventional volume rendering using CT and CBCT data of the facial skeleton,” written by Tobias Steffen and et al. appears in the April 2022 edition of the Annals of Anatomy (151905). The article sought to explore if three-dimensional cinematic rendering image re-constructions offer advantages over conventional volume rendering to visualize cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) and computed tomography (CT) images of the facial skeleton. In the study, ten dentists reviewed 10 different patient cases of CT or CBCT exams of reconstructed cinematic rendering or volume rendering of the orofacial skeleton. The dentists were given a questionnaire to assess objective and subjective criteria of image perception. To assess objective criteria, predefined questions on the visual perception of anatomical image characteristics, were given to the denists. To assess subjective criteria, a visual … Read more

What Dentists Should Say to Patients when Something Doesn’t Go Right

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Unfortunately dentists and oral surgeons don’t always have all procedures go as planned for their patients. For example, when it comes to wisdom tooth surgery, it is possible for the wrong set of wisdom teeth to be removed as is discussed on the wisdom teeth complications page, see https://www.teethremoval.com/complications.html. Since procedures don’t always go as planned, on this site before guidance for patients who want to be very defensive has been provided, see the post The Defensive Patients Guide to Wisdom Teeth Removal. While patients can sometimes be bad actors and deny that certain information was provided to them prior to a procedure (see the post Patient Recall During Informed Consent for Wisdom Teeth Surgery), dentists and oral surgeons also can behavior badly such as by telling patient’s after their procedure that their condition that resulted could not have possibly … Read more