Can You Grow Three Sets of Teeth?
I had a patient in yesterday who has a 5 year old son. He was born prematurely and has had some growth difficulties, hormone deficiencies and basically a difficult time although his appearance and intelligence are normal. She took him to the pedodontist (children’s dentist) who said that it looks like he has 3 sets of teeth.
Supernumerary Teeth
If this should occur, the first set is the baby teeth which usually come out between 6 and 12. The next part gets tricky, because there is simply not room for 2 more sets of teeth. One of the sets is usually shaped abnormally and resemble supernumerary teeth. These consist of tooth material but just aren’t shaped like normal human teeth but more like shark teeth. It is not uncommon to have 1 or 2 extra teeth: I had one grow out of the roof of my mouth and another hidden between the roots of my upper premolars. These were removed prior to braces without any trouble. My orthodontic treatment proceeded from there at age 13 quite normally.
The Great Smile
The more teeth there are, the more difficult the trip to well aligned pearly whites and a great American smile. The good news is that modern orthodontics is at an advanced stage in this country to get really nice results at the end of treatment for those senior prom and yearbook pictures.