I had no idea they had teeth more or less in children, but a very curious anecdote has led me to investigate this abnormality in the teeth of the little ones.
It turns out that a friend recently told me that her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter had had a tooth over her right side between the incisor and the fang. Precisely, that same week another friend tells me that her three-year-old son had had all his teeth except one, the right lateral incisor, just on the same side. I was amused because the tooth that was left over to one of the children was missing from the other. It is not something so frequent as to find two children with exactly the same problem, and also complementary.
Temporary or baby teeth are 20 in total, 10 come up and 10 down, but there may be a alteration in the number of teeth, both by excess and by default. The eruption of all milk teeth is completed around three years. Later they will fall to give way to the final teeth, which are 32 in total.
Teeth of more or supernumerary teeth in children
Extra teeth are called supernumerary teeth. Hyperodoncy is characterized by a number of teeth greater than normal. The teeth of more usually leave more frequently in the upper jaw than in the lower one and is more common in men than in women.
Supernumerary teeth can have two forms. They can be normal, like the rest of the teeth, usually mimic the shape of the mirror-shaped tooth, (called supplementary or eumorphic). In the primary dentition they usually appear more frequently in the area of the upper lateral incisors.
Or they can be different from the rest of the teeth (rudimentary or dysmorphic). They are teeth with atypical shapes (cone-shaped, pointed, etc). The prototype conical supernumerary tooth is called mesiodens, which emerges between the two upper central incisors.
There may be hyperodoncy in both the primary and permanent dentition, but it is more frequent in the first.
It is a genetic anomaly without major significance. Controls are usually performed using x-rays and the pediatric dentist will determine if it is necessary to remove the tooth and when. Supernumerary teeth sometimes do not fall like normal teeth and it is necessary to extract them, generally at the age at which milk teeth usually fall, from the age of six.
Teeth less or agenesis in children
Agenesis (hypodontia), or lack of at least one tooth, is the most common of dental development anomalies.
In the primary teeth this anomaly occurs more frequently in the upper and lower lateral incisors and lower canines.
When a tooth is missing in the primary dentition, it will also be missing in the permanent dentition, since the absence of the primary teeth entails the absence of the final teeth. But you can also have all the primary teeth and missing one or some permanent.
Agenesis can occur in isolation, but it is also associated to children with syndromes or pathologies such as Down syndrome, also to children with ectodermal dysplasia or cleft palate.
