Climbing the Mountains of Severe Impaction

Orthodontic treatment of impacted teeth cannot be a “cookbook”. Although the results can be excellent, treatment is complicated, usually long and requires one or several surgical interventions. Manifold reasons can cause failure, such as inaccurate positional diagnosis, missed resorption of adjacent teeth, wrong mechanotherapy, surgical mistakes and more. The risk of failure increases with the severity of impaction. In this presentation, several difficult impaction cases will be utilized to illustrate the step-by-step decision-making process which can help the clinician make the most thoughtful treatment decision, highlighting the importance of early diagnosis, gathering of comprehensive pretreatment data, assessing treatment alternatives, weighing the evidence and critically reviewing the decision and its consequences.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the importance of early and accurate diagnosis for initiating preventive measures and planning mechanotherapy.
• Define the needs of each individual case and adapt the most appropriate surgical exposure, in cooperation with the oral surgeon.
• Recognize potential pitfalls which lead to failure and be able to critically review the decisions and their consequences.