StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Well this sucks my tooth and jaw was hurting but I couldn't been seen for a week. So after a week of fairly intense pain and swelling in my jaw I finally get in. Apparently the tooth the put a crown on a few months back had a small cavity they missed. So now it killed of the root and the gases from the decomposing root has seriously swollen up the surrounding tissue. So now I have to have a root canal but can't get it fixed until end of April and the antibiotics they gave me MIGHT reduce the swelling in a few days.

That sounds like an "Inquire with every capable professional within a 3hr driving radius for an earlier date" type of problem.

The dentist is quite right. They can't do a root canal when the tissue is badly inflamed. They will usually drill enough to relieve the internal pressure and give antibiotics to reduce the infection enough to do the full surgery. End of April seems a bit long, though.

Oh man, I once had a dentist lose the tip of his instrument in my root canal. I had to come back twice and he never managed to get it out. Then he simply closed it with the tip still in the canal. It did work and I didn´t have any problems since then but the three or so weeks in which I had do come back for him to try to get it out were a world of suck.

I found that rinsing my mough with Lysterine every half an hour or so and blowing warm air from a hair dryer onto my jaw brought some pain relief.

Ugh keep a damn eye on that bit of metal!

A friend of mine just had a tooth and a bit of jaw bone extracted because ~15 years ago a dentist left a bit of titanium file in his tooth doing a root canal (and never told him!!!)... it healed fine at the time but turned into an abscess which was noticed when he got X-rays to finally have his wisdom teeth removed a few months ago. They put a bone graft in and he's still healing up to await the tooth implant. Never caused pain or anything, but it could have gotten much worse. The file chunk in his case though had actually pierced the wall of the tooth and was also touching flesh though. It may not be the same problem if its entirely contained within the tooth.

Thanks for the warning.
The dentist claimed that it wouldn´t be a problem and he only wanted to get it out because he "was a bit of a perfectionist" but I was allways pretty suspicious since he obviously didn´t get any money for what would be unnecessary work if it really couldn´t be problematic. The next time i go to the dentist, which is a different one, I´ll be sure to get an X-Ray of the tooth in question.

I also got a tip of the file stuck in a tooth, but the dentist was able to get it out after 3 hours of trying. That was...unpleasant

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin