Exploring Antibiotic Use with Lower Wisdom Teeth Surgery

An interesting article titled “Correlation of antibiotic prophylaxis and difficulty of extraction with post operative inflammatory complications in the lower third molar surgery” appears in the 2014 British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and written by J. Y. Lee and et al. (vol. 52, pp. 54-57). The article set out to investigate the correlation between antibiotic prophylaxis, difficulty of extraction, and postoperative complications of lower wisdom teeth. The authors say that indiscriminate antibiotic prophylaxis can lead to antimicrobial resistance and a shift in the microbial population. The authors performed a retrospective analysis of extraction of lower wisdom teeth performed at Korea University Guro Hospital over a two year time frame starting in January 2010. The authors only included cases in which cefditoren pivoxil was prescribed as an antibiotic. In addition, patients that were kept in a hospital due to postoperative complications were excluded from the … Read more

Is Not Removing Wisdom Teeth Causing Harm?

An interesting article titled “Is official advice about NOT pulling out wisdom teeth doing more harm than good?” appeared earlier this year in February 2015, on the DailyMail over at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2946498/Is-NHS-causing-agony-telling-dentists-not-pull-wisdom-teeth.html and written by Cara Lee. The article questions whether or not the year 2000 guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) went too far with preventing wisdom teeth extractions in teenagers and young adults. In these guidelines NICE said that the practice of prophylactic removal of pathology-free impacted third molars should be discontinued in the National Health Service in the U.K. Hence only wisdom teeth with problems should be extracted. In the article on the DailyMail there is a discussion of a 31 year old male who never had wisdom teeth extracted in his teens. Now he needs his wisdom teeth extracted and the molars … Read more

Seventeen Year Old Minnesota Teen Dies After Wisdom Teeth Extraction

A few weeks ago in June, 2015, a 17 year old Minnesota woman died about a week after having wisdom teeth surgery. Near the end of the wisdom teeth surgery her blood pressure increased, her pulse dropped, and she went into cardiac arrest. She then was transferred to a hospital and suffered from seizures and swelling in her brain until passing about a week later. It is not clear what caused the death to occur. She could have possibly had an undisclosed heart condition that has occurred in other cases. It is possible for a patient to only become aware of an asymptomatic and abnormal heart rhythm once they come in for a surgery. I have discussed other deaths from wisdom teeth removal on this website (see http://www.teethremoval.com/death.html). Based on numerous studies and publications I have said that around 1 … Read more

Wisdom Teeth Removal: Tweets from Twitter

As the name of this website is teethremoval.com, often discussion of removing teeth, specifically wisdom teeth, are mentioned. One way to find out what people are saying first hand from their wisdom teeth removal experience is from Twitter. Many tweet out some 140 character message with the hashtag #wisdomteeth. Below I have included many tweets with the hashtag #wisdomteeth over the past year in 2014. 1) alexis @kickrockspunk all these ppl at the movie theater eating popcorn and i’m just like slurpee w/ no straw #wisdomteeth 2) paige @paaigehattonn I feel the need to explain to everyone why my cheeks are huge when I’m out #wisdomteeth 3) David Solberg ‏@da_solberg16 Will sell soul to eat solid food #WisdomTeeth 4) weston huser ‏@westonhuser I get to be a chipmunk tomorrow #WisdomTeeth 5) Jenna Haverkamp ‏@JennaHaverkamp Dear Lord, Please don’t let me … Read more

Recent Stories on Wisdom Teeth Removal Death

I have recently posted about 2 potential deaths from wisdom teeth removal that occurred this year in 2014. The first one is an 18 year old man in Maine (see Eighteen Year Old Music Student in Portland Dies After Wisdom Teeth Removal). The second is a 24 year old woman who went into a coma in Hawaii (see Mother of Two in Hawaii in a Coma After Wisdom Teeth Surgery). These stories got some play in various media outlets. For example, Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com wrote an article titled “Wisdom teeth surgery a deadly dental scam: Young mother falls into coma following visit to dentist” see  http://www.naturalnews.com/044415_wisdom_teeth_extraction_dental_scam_death_risk.html#ixzz2xOPQYbzy. In the article Mike says “Across virtually the entire industry of conventional dentistry, this dangerous surgery scam is pushed on patients with unethical fear tactics that claim asymptomatic wisdom teeth — teeth with no symptoms, … Read more