infection

As the last teeth to emerge into the mouth, wisdom teeth can be the source of a lot of problems. Because they typically don't develop until ages 17-24, they may not have enough room to grow in, causing painful impaction of the teeth. This means that these four wisdom teeth may only partially come through into the mouth, or in some cases, not at all.

Wisdom teeth are the source of many aches and pains, and removal is typically the best option to relieve symptoms of impaction. What may not be commonly known is their ability to affect other regions of the body, causing symptoms of headaches and neck pain. This article will strive to provide answers to those who are wondering about the full range of wisdom tooth pain, including lesser known symptoms like headaches and neck pain.

Is it True That Wisdom Teeth Can Cause Headaches and Neck Pain?

In short, absolutely. As wisdom teeth slowly grow into maturation, they can have some potentially significant—and painful—effects on the rest of your body. With decreased room to grow, wisdom teeth create natural tension. This slowly building tension can spread from your gums, into your jaw, and across other areas of your body.

How Do They Cause this Pain?

Headaches come as a result of tension and irregular pressure in your jaw. As wisdom teeth grow in, they may cause your other teeth to shift in order to make room. Sometimes this results in what dentists call a “gum pouch.” This is a small, painful pouch that results from an infection caused by a wisdom tooth trying to come through.

As a result, your jaw position and your bite may be forced to change in an attempt to avoid unnecessary pain. While adjusting your jaw position may save you from biting down on a swollen and painful gum pocket, you may be unknowingly causing further harm. Changing your bite pattern could shift your jaw joints into an unnatural position.

Those shifted jaw joints may become swollen and painful, and could get pushed against your ear muscles every time those joints are flexed. This is what causes a headache—direct and unnatural pressure against ear muscles due to a shifted jaw position and bite pattern.

Increased tension in your jaw can certainly spread to your neck, causing neck pain as well. That pressure can quickly spread from the back of your jaw to your lower neck, increasing overall pain, and perhaps inflaming headache symptoms, as well. Headaches and neck pain can be sure signs that a wisdom tooth has been infected, and needs removal.

What Are the Treatment Options for Impacted Wisdom Teeth?

Treatment options are split into two groups: preventative treatment, and permanent relief. The best way to prevent wisdom teeth from becoming infected is to practice routine and thorough oral hygiene. Surrounding decay also causes many painful symptoms caused by wisdom teeth, or food and bacteria getting trapped around the tooth. Proper and thorough oral hygiene can act as good preventative measures for incoming wisdom teeth.

Unfortunately, the placement of wisdom teeth can make proper hygiene tough. Because they rest so far back in the jaw, they can be hard to clean. Additionally, there is not much to do for preventing pain from wisdom teeth—it's painful, but a relatively natural growth process.

Once impacted, or infected, the absolute best treatment is to have the affected teeth removed. Unfortunately, painkillers are only a temporary solution to what could become a permanent—and dangerous—problem. Left untreated, an impacted wisdom tooth could spread infections into the jaw muscles, which could travel into the brain. Keeping your body as healthy as possible can sometimes mean keeping your mouth as healthy as possible, too.

Not only will this alleviate painful symptoms, but removing wisdom teeth is the best way to prevent your body from developing an abnormal bite pattern. This will relieve tension headaches and neck pain, as well.

Conclusion

While wisdom teeth can indeed carry a host of painful symptoms and issues, the good news is that wisdom teeth pain is entirely treatable. You may not be able to prevent your wisdom teeth from coming in, but you can certainly avoid suffering unnecessary pain through wisdom teeth removal.

If you are suffering from headaches and neck pain, visit Water Tower Dental Care in Chicago today! We can help you determine if your wisdom teeth could be the cause.

You can’t always put off seeing the dentist. If you have a simple cavity, it’s easy to wait to see the dentist for a couple of days. A painful cracked tooth is another story. We’re here to help you figure out what you should do if you have a dental emergency in Chicago. The more prepared you are, the quicker you’ll be able to deal with any serious dental issues.

What Are Dental Emergencies?

Just because you experience a little tooth pain or discomfort doesn’t mean you need to drop everything and see the dentist right away. Some dental issues require more immediate attention, whereas others can wait a few days or weeks. Here are some potential teeth problems that may be considered dental emergencies:

• Lost tooth
• Knocked-out tooth
• Loose tooth
• Tooth that’s moved out of alignment
• Chipped tooth that’s in pain
• Fractured or cracked tooth
• Serious tissue injury inside your mouth
• Acute teeth, gum or tissue pain
• Continuous bleeding from tissues inside your mouth
• Infection inside your mouth

What To Do If You’re Experiencing a Dental Emergency in Chicago

If you have a dental emergency in Chicago, you need to see a dentist right away. This is why we Water Tower Dental Care offers 24/7 emergency dental care to our patients on The Magnificent Mile. All you have to do is give us a call and we’ll take care of the rest.  If you call us outside of normal office hours, please listen to the recording on our voicemail and follow the instructions. Emergency calls are answered at all hours of the day, as is emergency dental care.

CEREC One-Visit Crowns

One of the most common dental emergencies at Water Tower Dental Care is a cracked, chipped or fractured tooth. Whether you crack your tooth on food or knock your tooth against something, this type of injury can cause serious pain. A broken tooth can also cause your nerves to be exposed to dangerous bacteria, which can cause dangerous infection.
We can treat this issue quickly and effectively with a CEREC One-Visit Crown, alleviating your pain and providing you with a full tooth again. Using our CEREC technology, we can perfectly fit, craft and place your crown, inlay or onlay in just one hour. It’s the perfect solution to a painful dental emergency.
Experiencing a dental emergency? Call us right now. If you’re calling during us during our off-hours, please follow the simple instructions in the recording you hear. We provide emergency dental care in Chicago 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Over the years, dental implant surgery has become better and better. In fact, the procedure currently has about a 95% success rate, according to Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Still, like with any surgery, there are some problems that can occur. Thankfully, almost all of these problems are pretty rare and can be avoided with planning and proper care. Here are five of the most common problems with dental implants and how you can avoid them.

Dental Implants Don’t Properly Bond to Jawbone

One of the most common issues by far is that a dental implant won’t properly bond to the jawbone after surgery. Over the few months after your surgery, your dental implant should begin to securely connect with your jawbone. This process is technically known as osseointegration. If the implant falls out, is loose or too much bone loss occurs, then the implant has failed.
An implant may fail to bond to your jawbone for a variety of reasons, including the following. We will go into more details about the specific dental implant problems below throughout the rest of the article.

• The implant may have been placed in the wrong position
• You don’t have enough bone density or volume
• You have damaged structures around your implant
• Your implant gets cracked or fractured
• You receive a sudden blow or injury to your face
• You are a smoker

Infection

If you develop an infection caused by your dental implant, you may need to have it removed. Infections can be caused by bad hygiene during or after your implant surgery. This is why it’s very important to go to a practiced and proven periodontist or surgeon for your surgery. You also need to make sure to practice proper dental hygiene habits every day. Otherwise, you can easily develop an infection. If you have thin gums, are a smoker, or have diabetes, you may be at more risk of developing an infection.

Smoking

One of the top causes of implant failure that we see at Water Tower Dental Care is smoking. Though many smokers have successful implant surgeries, failure rates are significantly higher in smokers than nonsmokers. Smoking increases your chances of getting an infection, improper bonding between your jawbone and implant, and developing peri-implantitis, a destructive disease the causes inflammation around your gums and the bone surrounding your dental implant. Learn more about how smoking negatively impacts dental implants here.

Nerve Damage

Nerve damage after dental implant surgery can be caused by an inexperienced periodontist or dentist. If an implant is placed too close to your nerve, it can cause permanent or temporary nerve damage. This can lead to numbing, tingling, or chronic pain in your tongue, lips, gums, cheek or chin.

Sinus and Bone Density Issues

Some patients may have problems with dental implants because of their sinuses or jawbone. If sinuses are present when you’re getting an implant in the upper row of your teeth, you may develop an infection. Thankfully, this is an easy issue to fix. A dentist should be able to recognize a sinus issue easily, and it can be fixed with surgery. You should always let your dentist know if you have sinus problems before dental implant surgery.
A strong jawbone with enough volume is key to a successful dental implant. If your jawbone doesn’t have enough mass, a sinus lift or bone graft may be performed to improve bone density, volume and space. You need enough bone to support and bond with an implant.

Damage to Surrounding Tissues

Since your implant will penetrate your gums, it’s inevitable that tissue will be damaged when you receive dental implants. However, this damage typically heals quickly and without complications. If you notice excessive bleeding and pain during your first few days after surgery, or if the bleeding and pain continues after a few days, you should let your dentist know. There may be a problem.

Dental Implant Crack

At Water Tower Dental Care, we work with a titanium post and realistic dental crown to make up your dental implant. These dental implants are incredibly strong. But even so, the implants can be cracked or fractured if you are hit hard in the face or if you grind your teeth a lot over a long period of time. This is very rare, but it’s possible. Once the implant breaks, a new one will need to be inserted.
Interested in receiving a dental implant? Contact Water Tower Dental Care today! We work with talented and skilled periodontists to ensure you’re getting the best service possible.

When your teeth fail you, the last thing you want is your dental implant failing you as well because of smoking. Dental implants work as a lifelike substitute for missing teeth. They are the only restorative dental solution that stops jawbone loss and gives you the full set of teeth you need to retain good oral health.
Fortunately, many smokers have successful dental implant treatments. However, smoking has been found to significantly increase the chance of dental implant failure. Let’s take a closer look at how smoking affects dental implants so that you can have a successful experience with this tooth replacement procedure.

Implants May Not Properly Bond With Jawbone

Right off the bat, smoking regularly before you receive implants may make it harder for the implant to fully fuse with your jawbone. Cigarette, pipe and cigar smoking has been found to cause jawbone loss, severe periodontal (gum and bone) disease and delayed wound healing, according to the College of Dental Hygienists of Ontario. The tobacco you consume while smoking limits blood flow to your gums, reducing the oxygen and nutrients they need to stay healthy, recover and fight off bacterial infection.
If your jawbone, gum tissue, and muscle surrounding the implant aren’t healthy and cannot properly heal after you’ve received the implant, your implant may not be able to fuse with your jaw bone. The soft tissues of your gums typically take a few weeks to heal around the implant, and the jaw takes months to osseointegrate with the implant.
Studies have found that patients who smoked during the implant placement surgery had a higher rate of early implant failure than nonsmokers. This makes sense, as smoking negatively affects the health of your jaw and gums. It’s best to avoid smoking during the early stages of your implant surgery to allow the implant to fully osseointegrate correctly. Otherwise, your implant may need to be taken out soon after your surgery.

Increases Chances of Infection

Like all surgeries, there is a risk of infection with dental implants. But the risk is very low for patients with great oral health and a strong immune system. Smokers, on the other hand, are more likely to develop an infection after they receive implants because it’s harder for their gums and jaw to fully recover. If patients smoke soon after their surgery, their wounds are also exposed to chemicals, making infection more likely. While antibiotics can be used to treat infection, smoking can reduce the effectiveness of these drugs.

Greater Risk of Developing Peri-Implantitis

Smoking doesn’t just affect the success of your dental implants in the early stages of healing. Peri-implantitis can occur years after your dental implant surgery and often causes implant failure. Peri-implantitis is an infectious disease that results in inflammation around gums and bone surrounding a dental implant. If left untreated, it can lead to progressive bone loss around the implant and eventual implant failure. Fortunately, peri-implantitis is rare. But smoking has been found to increase your risk of developing the disease. Smokers are also especially susceptible to bone loss.

How to Increase Your Chances of Dental Implant Success As a Smoker

Don’t worry, smokers. It’s not all bad news. While smoking does increase the chance that your dental implant won’t last long, many patients who smoke have successful treatments with implants that last their entire lives. It’s also important to note that ex-smokers who have not smoked in years increase their success rate. The best thing you can do for yourself and your dental implant is to stop smoking. Countless studies have noted that patients should stop smoking to decrease their risk of implant failure. You can find a variety of resources designed to help you quit smoking here.
Interested in getting dental implants in Chicago? Receiving dental implants from Chicago’s top cosmetic dentistry, Water Tower Dental Care, is a smart investment in your smile’s longevity. If you’re a smoker or ex-smoker, we can gauge the health of your mouth before you receive implants and talk to you about possible treatment plans. Request an appointment with us today!