The tooth that never showed up...

During our wellness visits, there are some health problems that we commonly see. Then there are issues we might never see again. Here's a story of one such example.

The particular cat in mention really didn't have too much going on as a kitten, except that when the baby teeth fell out, one of the adults never showed up. I really didn't think too much of it...perhaps this tooth wanted to be fashionably late. I asked the owner to keep an eye on the area, and call me to let me know when it shows up. Well, after a few months, we began to get concerned because it never did. So we decided to do some investigation. For comparison purposes, here is what the upper right area of the cat's mouth looks like on radiographs (generated by xray):
For this cat's young age, this is a good looking canine tooth. Here's a radiograph of the area in question:
That ain't right.

So, in an area where we saw nothing but gum, there was indeed something hidden - a malformed canine tooth. Cutting to the chase, because of the abnormalities seen, we do not have reason to suspect this tooth is suddenly going to get better. Rather, the fear was that should we do nothing, eventually some sort of dentigious cyst would form and we'd have a huge painful mess on our hands.

With a degree of trepidation, we decide to cut into the area, and this is what we see:
So just under the gum, there is a very tiny portion of the tooth visible. To allow for elevation of this tooth, we use our drill to remove some bone and other material, thus allowing for better exposure.
At this point, I have created just enough space to help get that fat root out of the socket.
This is the point of the surgery where the technicians find me much easier to be around (I can get fussy when I am worried that I might break a fragile tooth). So with the hard part out of the way, we clean up the borders of the bone and gum, pack the socket with a bone graft, and close up the area with suture.
The mouth now looks much like it did to start with, only without a ticking timebomb hidden within. Score one point for preventative oral surgery!