Impacted wisdom teeth a small minority (less than 2%) of adults age 65 years or older maintaining the teeth without caries or periodontal disease and 13% maintaining unimpacted wisdom teeth without caries or periodontal disease. Periodontal probing depths increase over time to greater than 4 mm in a significant proportion of young adults with retained impacted wisdom teeth which is associated with increases in serum inflammatory markers such as interleukin-6, soluble intracellular adhesion molecule-1 and C-reactive protein. Crowding of the front teeth is not believed to be caused by the eruption of wisdom teeth although this is a reason many dental clinicians use
Impacted wisdom teeth the mandible. Another study on 5000 army recruits found 10,767 impacted wisdom teeth. The frequency of impacted lower third molars has been found to be 72% and the frequency of retained impacted wisdom teeth that are free of disease and symptoms is estimated at 11.6% to 29% which drops with age. The incidence of wisdom tooth removal was estimated to be 4 per 1000 person years in England and Wales prior to the 2000 NICE guidelines. Wisdom teeth have been described in the ancient texts of Plato and Hippocrates. "Teeth of wisdom" being from the Latin, "dentes sapientiæ", which in