Long before a tooth appears in the mouth, it is already moving. This chapter follows that hidden journey: from a crown sitting quietly in its bony crypt, to a root that elongates and drags it upward, to the same resorb-here/build-there bone machinery from the last chapter now working vertically instead of sideways, to the preformed path it follows through bone, and to what happens when any link in that chain breaks.
Every mechanism in the last two chapters can fail in a specific, recognizable way. A blocked path stalls a tooth in impaction. The follicle that clears bone can instead trap fluid and become a cyst. A ligament that never regenerates after injury lets bone fuse directly onto root, freezing a tooth in place. And a primary tooth's own exfoliation depends on the same resorption machinery being aimed at its root instead of bone. This chapter follows each failure back to the normal process it broke.
OrthoTruss