Abstract

AN INVESTIGATION ON WISDOM TEETH: AGE AND GENDERWISE DIFFERENCES IN ERUPTION/IMPACTED/ABSENCE

C. Shashank, P. Divakar and Dr. G. Swathi*

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Abstract

Wisdom teeth are the toughest molars which appear lately and the one which causes trouble while erupting. This is one of the vestigial organ which is now not in use as we are taking soft food instead of food which is chewed hard. As we know these set of molars are much less in use, so they can be carefully studied to understand the mechanism of evolution. We had surveyed about 1200 people, about their wisdom tooth status as either present/impacted or absent. There is no much difference between male and female. We had noted that mostly the eruption age of molars had increased and also it correlates with the impacted tooth. By this we can conclude the evolution is going on eliminating the organs which are not in use.

Keywords: Wisdom tooth, impacted tooth, chewing, evolution.