Gum boil not going away after root canal retreatment

[chamomile]

Hi, I got a root canal on my tooth #14 around 15 years ago, by an endodontist. About 4 years ago, my dentist noticed an abscess on my gum and I was referred to another endodontist, who recommended an apicoectomy. I'm not sure why they did not go for a retreatment first, but I followed their recommendation and got the apico. Fast forward to a few months ago, I noticed a gum boil on that same area. I saw yet another endodontist who retreated the root canal. He said that with the tooth cleaned out, in theory my body could clear the rest of the infection and the gum boil will shrink and go away.

However, it's been 6 weeks since my root canal and the gum boil is still there. It doesn't appear to be getting smaller (or larger). I went back to the endodontist a week ago and he looked, but suggested that I wait and see and to come back in a 5 more months.

This is causing me a ton of anxiety; I really don't want to lose the tooth because I'm only 30 (and I'm super afraid of extraction). How long does it take for a gum boil to heal after treatment? Is this amount of time within the normal range?

 

[Gordon]

Hard to be sure without seeing x-rays but it seems reasonable to leave it for a bit longer, assuming there's no other symptoms. It can take a while for the area to heal up.

 

[chamomile]

Hard to be sure without seeing x-rays but it seems reasonable to leave it for a bit longer, assuming there's no other symptoms. It can take a while for the area to heal up.

Hi @Gordon, thanks for the reply and reassurance. Based on your experience, how long it usually takes for it to heal up (I was not given antibiotics)? I am curious what are the expected times for it to go away, and I wasn’t able to get a concrete answer from my endodontist.

 

[Gordon]

There's no real expected time, each case can vary depending on lots of different factors, location, host response, size of the original lesion etc.
Sometimes they don't heal, not because of anything wrong with the root filling or anything, but because sometimes the body successfully "walls off" the area with epithelial tissue which kind of freezes things in place. If that happens then a small surgical procedure can be done to clear things up. Again though, there's no rush to doing this if you're not having any symptoms.

 

[Hellotherefriend112]

@chamomile how are you now?

 

[chamomile]

@chamomile how are you now?

Hi! Thanks for asking. Unfortunately it still hasn’t healed and my endodontist declared the treatment a failure. I’m trying a last retreatment; otherwise I’ll have to get it extracted