To extract or not to extract, that is the question...

[kip]

Had my 4th (I think, I forget!) adjustment with my ortho this morning. Everything is going swimmingly and my once wonky teeth are now pretty much straight! He said he's taken my treatment pretty much as far as he can now without extracting teeth. He said it's up to me where we go from here and at my next appointment I have to decide whether to have my last remaining upper right bicuspid extracted.

Back story is that this is my second round of braces, had all four first bicuspids extracted when I was a teenager for round one. Following years of thumb sucking post braces, my midline is very off to the right.

My ortho said that by extracting this premolar, it would give the room to shift everything back centrally to where they should be and it would also reduce my overjet, as it is still around 4-5mm.

I'm leaning towards having the extraction and coming out of my treatment with near perfect teeth but I'm worried about extracting a perfectly healthy tooth and not having any bicuspids on my upper right side. Would anyone care to advise what they'd do? I'm going to talk to everyone I know and see what their thoughts are and any thoughts are welcome!

Pictures of my wonky centreline below, as you can see, my canines are actually vertically parallel and sit on top of each other.

[Lovespain5]

Don't extract any teeth as you had extracted your 4 first bicuspids as a teenager! I myself had a treatment with 4 bicuspid extractions and I refused the extraction of my wisdom teeth as I think that having 8 teeth out is too much. Each type of tooth has his own fonction and not having any bicuspid more won't be good for your chewing. Moreover when you'll smile other people would see directly a molar after your canine which isn't very aesthetic in my opinion.
Good luck for your treatment!

[bez]

I know how you feel, it wasn't easy for me to give up both my upper premolars but I have a small mouth, big teeth and severe crowding so I didn't really have much choice. Your teeth look fine to me the way they are but it's not like you'll be making a mistake even if you decide to have the extraction.

[kip]

Thanks for the input guys.

I'm still leaning towards extracting the tooth. I spoke to my ortho in-depth and he assured me that if the tooth was removed that it wouldn't affect my bite. Having my canine next to my molar doesn't bother me massively as when I smile, you can't see past my canine anyway. Having a 100% aesthetically perfect smile isn't my goal of having braces, it was to get rid of my overjet and seems like the extraction is the way to do this!

Anyone else have any opinions? More the merrier!

[phasesofbeauty]

I would get it extracted. After two rounds of full braces, you want to have the best teeth you can. It is just one tooth. If he was talking about more than one tooth (after all of the teeth you've already had extracted) I would say no. You look like you have a small mouth anyway.