They grow at the back of your jaw and there are usually four, two upper and two lower, one on each side. They grow in an area of the jaw called a zone of variability . This means that any one individual may have less than four wisdom teeth, no wisdom teeth at all or, rarely, more than four.
Impaction simply means getting caught and it can be painful.
This occurs most commonly with the lower wisdom teeth. The type of procedure performed will depend very much on the problem. The surgery may be carried out by a general dentist or by a specialist oral surgeon, depending on the complexity of the operation and how much of the tooth is caught. Again, whether a local or general anaesthetic is used also depends to a large part on the difficulty of the operation. Surgery on the upper wisdom teeth is usually simpler than on the lower set.