• Research Paper on:
    Maxillary Third Molar

    Number of Pages: 3

     

    Summary of the research paper:

    A 3 page research paper that discusses wisdom teeth. Bibliography lists 4 sources

    Name of Research Paper File: KL9_kh3rdmolar.rtf

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    Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
    buccal cusps (Adult Molars, 2009). In human beings, molars are "important in chewing and maintaining the vertical dimension" (Adult Molars, 2009). Maxillary third permanent molars are known in the  vernacular as "wisdom teeth," due to the fact that they erupt late in life, i.e., late teens or early twenties. This tooth shows more developmental variation than any other permanent  teeth and they are the most frequent teeth to be congenitally missing (Adult Molars, 2009). The crown is typically shorter in both the axial and mesiodistal dimensions and, while two  buccal roots are evident, in most cases they are fused (Adult Molars, 2009). Furthermore, the mesial buccal cusp is generally larger than the distal buccal cusp (Adult Molars, 2009).  As how this particular tooth works, the vast majority of dentists and oral surgeons would argue that, while third molars probably worked well for prehistoric humans, it does not work  well in the smaller mouth of modern humanity. Each year roughly 5 million people have their wisdom teeth extracted (Friedman, 2007). Of these, roughly 11,000 will suffer some form of  permanent paresthesia, which is "numbness of the lip, tongue or cheek," due to nerve injury incurred during oral surgery (Friedman, 2007, p. 1554). According to Jay W. Friedman, there  is no scientifically valid evidence for the standard practice of removing the third molar when there appears to be insufficient anatomical space to accommodate eruption of this tooth (Friedman, 2007).  According to Friedman (2007), no more than 12 percent of impacted wisdom teeth are associated with pathology. This statistic is roughly the same for appendicitis, yet prophylactic appendectomies are not  routinely recommended (Friedman, 2007). A possible reason for extracting third molars is the commonly held belief that they will crowd anterior teeth, causing them to overlap and ruin thousands 

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