04/30/2025
PSA: get your wisdom teeth out! Impacted wisdom teeth can be asymptomatic but still problematic.
This 70 year old patient’s wisdom teeth had not been a problem until recently; imaging at her dentist’s office showed a radiolucent lesion with tooth #17 displaced inferiorly, beyond the border of the mandible. Dr. O’Brien used a cervical approach to remove the tooth and enucleate the lesion. The facial vein was identified and the Hayes-Martin maneuver used to preserve the marginal mandibular nerve.
The lesion’s diagnosis was dentigerous cyst; the patient is doing well with full function of her facial nerve. Not often a tooth is extracted through the neck!