A wise approach?

According to Wikipedia, the definition of wisdom is as follows: “Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight.”

So that got me thinking, are we using our wisdom when it comes to the third molars? Are we all thinking along the same lines as specialist professionals, or do we have ‘specialisation bias’ based on our dental nurturing?

There is no doubt that guidelines help us all think in the same way: to have some consistency and uniformity. However, it is all based on the notion that the guidelines hold weight and for the guideline to be robust and longstanding it should be regularly updated and of course look at the bigger picture.

The National Institute of Heath and Care Excellence (NICE), first published in March 2000, called for an end to prophylactic removal of wisdom teeth in the national health service (NHS).

NICE argued that based on available evidence, there was no clinical indication of 44 per cent of third molar removals. This would evaluate to a financial saving of approximately £5m for the NHS at the time.