Impacted Canines Barrie, ON
Impacted Canine
Recognizing impacted eyeteeth early can greatly affect the success of treatment. The first step is recognizing issues that are related to spacing and crowding in the mouth, specifically with children.
Why Canines are So Important
Canines fill a pretty important niche in the overall health of your mouth. Generally, canines are the first teeth from your upper jaw to come into contact with the opposing (bottom) jaw. Not only are they the first to make contact, they also typically fit around or “outside” of the opposing teeth on the bottom jaw. As a result, they do an excellent job of guiding the bottom jaw into a place that feels natural and comfortable.
If your canines are out of alignment there is a good chance that your bite will feel off. When you bite is off you can end up suffering a great deal of discomfort and even pain because your temporomandibular joint (TMJ) will be fatigued.
When your bite is off a lot of really nasty things can happen to your oral health. It can prompt you to start grinding your teeth at night. Grinding, also known as bruxism, can result in chips and cracks in your teeth as well as a fatigued jaw.
How often are canines impacted?
You may not have heard about canine impactions, which isn't out of the ordinary. Usually, when we hear that someone has a tooth impaction we just assume that it's a wisdom tooth. That's a good guess, because the wisdom teeth are, by far, the most frequently impacted tooth. The maxillary canine is actually the second most frequently impacted tooth, even though they are much less frequently impacted than wisdom teeth.
Early Detection of Impacted Teeth is Critical
The easiest way to fix any impaction is to find it in the early stages. The younger the patient with an impaction, the easier it will be to fix, generally speaking. When is the right time to bring your child in to be seen? We recommend bringing your kids in for a panoramic x-ray at around the age of seven. Usually at that time these teeth are lining up underneath the primary teeth and getting ready to erupt. With these x-rays we will be able to more easily determine whether or not an impaction is likely.
Treating Impacted Eyeteeth
Treatment by an orthodontist may consist of braces over the problem area with the intention of creating space. Treatment by an oral surgeon may consist of the extraction of baby teeth. The goal of both treatments is for the adult teeth to have enough room to grow in properly.
Whatever the issue, we have the ability to fix it with our top of the line oral and maxillofacial surgeons. We have the ability to treat even the most severe of impactions with a wide variety of solutions.