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Comment by AndrewThrowaway | Hacker News Reader

My experience:

Teeth looks fine and healthy, not much tartar to clean. When was the last time you visited?

Two years ago.

Oh no you should visit at least twice a year (?). Even if all looks fine x-ray is recommended which can reveal some things.

I do the x-ray. All is fine. You don't even have upper wisdom teeth. Lower wisdom teeth are at 90deg so they can pose a risk if they started growing.

Yeah, but I am 40 years old already? My mother is 70 and has the same 90deg wisdom teeth, never started growing?

TBH it really starts to feel "scammy" when they start suggesting procedures for things that might never happen.

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90-degree? Yeah, you should get those wisdom teeth out because general anesthesia at your advanced age would not be good for your longevity. That is, if your wisdom teeth were ever then to surface and rot.

Impacted, unerupted wisdom teeth are not always a problem. If you're over 25 [1] it's highly unlikely they'll ever attempt to erupt, never causing a problem.

Impacted wisdom teeth don't always stay impacted when they start moving too. They can straighten up when they start coming in.

[1] Hupp J, et al. Contemporary Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Chapter: Principles of Management of Impacted Teeth. From https://www.animated-teeth.com/wisdom_teeth/t6-wisdom-tooth-...

I have 4 impacted wisdom teeth completely sideways, and dentists on the east and west coast of the US have told me not to bother taking them out since I was 25 or older unless they start causing me problems.

General anesthesia? Here in Europe we don't do that. I had one wisdom tooth that got rotten and the injections did not help with the pain because of the infection, so the nurse held me down while the doctor pulled the tooth, me screaming in agony. Then they gave me a shot for the trauma so I would calm down. This is Northern Europe.

Holy smokes. It sounds like you weren’t given the option, but did you prefer that to the risks of GA?

(Honest question, no agenda. That sounds like something that would make me never go back to the dentist, but maybe that’s just me projecting popular dentist horror.)

Honestly it's just not a possibility in most of the dentist offices I've visited in Estonia as well as not really a thing (I don't know anyone who has ever gone under GA). Whatever horrible stuff that needs to get done gets done with you wide awake, and that's the norm. Good thing is that it's over pretty quickly.

When I lived in Spain I knew they offered GA there, but it usually meant paying 100+ EUR more, which is quite a lot. And europe doesn't really have a thing such as dental insurance. In most countries (Not 100% sure) in Europe you pay out of pocket for all the dentist stuff. Maybe you get a free cleaning once a year.

But other than the availability of GA and the money, I have nothing against it and would have obviously preferred that to my experience of medieval dentistry.

That's insane. Any practice here in middle Europe will give you Midazolam so you won't remember anything.

Not only that but from what I understand, a major nerve in your jaw grows closer to your wisdom teeth over time. So if you wait on a procedure like that until later in life, it increases the chance that the nerve will be damaged in the procedure, leading to a potential loss of feeling in part of your face. At least this is what I was told by my oral surgeon, assuming he wasn't lying to me for profit...

I waited until later in life. I have a partial loss of feeling in my face now, along with referred sensation in the same area (I feel things on the inside and outside of my mouth simultaneously, it is bizarre.)

So I would believe your surgeon :)

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