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Comment by SECProto | Hacker News Reader

Not quite sure I understand - give antibiotics instead of pulling wisdom teeth? They pull them because wisdom teeth often grow in at an angle to a mouth of fully developed and settled adult teeth. Sort of a "why mess with a good thing" (the teeth there already) approach. I certainly see an issue with the rampant pulling of wisdom teeth for cosmetic reasons, but don't see how it's relevant to a new treatment method for a life threatening illness.

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I meant the overall principle of maintain rather than remove.

So... braces? It's cheaper just to pull them. You really have to if you're someone like me whose mouth was too small for them to even come in.

My wisdom tooth extraction was a shit show for that reason, but I've had all my 12 year molars removed since then, the last one a couple of weeks ago, and the recovery is pretty easy. (They wanted to root canal it and crown it... I was like bro just pull it because otherwise we're just gonna have this same conversation again in 10 years.)

Fillings. For people who have reasonably well aligned wisdom teeth (not impacted, functional teeth), some dentists are inclined to remove them anyway; others to treat any decay which shows up but otherwise leave them alone. Again, this is something where norms differ by country.

Edit: Wait, you’ve had all your _second_ molars removed? That seems very unusual. I’m a little surprised the dentis was willing to do it, unless there was a big problem that couldn’t be dealt with otherwise.

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