What is the best treatment option for wisdom tooth decay, extraction or restoration?

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

I understand your concern and I have studied your x-ray. (attachment removed to protect patient identity).

The tooth is divided into the crown part and the root part. The tooth structure till the bone level from top is called the crown and beyond that is root. More than one half of the crown part is decayed and the decay had started penetrating the root part too. If you notice the x-ray, you could see the infection penetrated the root and weakened the adjacent bone too (the gap between the root and bone on the left side of x-ray). The infection has engulfed one of the roots completely.

The ideal treatment for this tooth is removal i.e. extraction. If the same scenario occurred in a tooth other than the wisdom tooth i.e. the third molar, I would have definitely advised you to save the tooth.

The reasons for advising extraction:

The wisdom tooth is highly unstable and there are more chances of secondary infection even after a good root canal treatment.

It carries out less than 5% of chewing. Extracting it will not make much difference to your chewing efficiency.

Oral hygiene maintanance in the wisdom tooth area is highly challenging which caused your decay in the first place (our brush does not reach that far).

Any treatment like fillings and root canal treatment in wisdom tooth may lead to jaw issues in the future because of its unstable nature.

I hope this helps.