I don’t know what’s going on but I’m scared

[Talentino]

I recently went in to see my dentist to get my retainers replaced but decided to also do my exam and cleaning. After my exam the dentist comes in to review the X-rays with me and there is this black circle under my 3 front teeth. I get scared and zone out. I cannot believe it because he is saying it’s an infection and there is no bone. He asks whether I’ve been in a fight and I said no. I have never been in a fight or been hit in that area before. I over hear the assistant say something about pass during my cleaning. Dentist say I might need to get a root canal to save the tooth and deal with the infection. He gives a referral to go to the endodontist. I get to the endo and we do the x rays again and a CT scan. She does the pain/sentivity test and my teeth are healthy. I have no paint in any of them everything checks out normal. She rules out an infection and says it might be a cyst. But no conclusion on what it is. I’m really scared about this whole thing. She is supposed to review my previous X-rays for the last two years and get back to me with what to do next. I believe she mentioned a biopsy. She also mentioned that my teeth might have moved significantly. Has anyone experienced this sort of thing before. Is this some sort of cancer. I have attached my X-rays

 

[Gordon]

It's most likely to be a cyst. Checking your prior x-rays will help to work out how long it has been there and how fast it's growing (if it's growing) or even if it's shrinking.
As they grow larger they can push teeth out of alignment.

You mention retainers, have you had orthodontic work done in this area? This can (rarely) provoke something like this to form.

It'll need to be removed surgically at some stage, unless it's shrinking when it can be left to see what happens.

When they remove it, then they'll automatically do a biopsy (don't let the word frighten you, it just means send it to a lab to get checked out under a microscope, it's not necessarily anything to do with cancer!).

 

[Talentino]

Thank you Gordon!! I have not had any othodontic work done in this area.

But i received a call this morning from the endodontist and this time she used the word lesion to describe what i have. She reviewed my X-rays from 2023 and 2024 and she says it’s growing. This is what she said

“Very obvious lesion at the root ends of number 2 5 and number 26 you can see that it's connected. It's in connection with the route and on the CBC and on the regular x-rays now typically such a lesion occurs when the nerve inside those respective teeth are dead the nerves are dead that's when it starts creating allusion like this so we have a set of test which test whether the nervous is dead or alive and when I tested the tooth? You felt the cold inside that you felt the EPT the electric pulp test. You felt it inside the dude and typically when you feel the cold test that means the nervous is alive and it is usually not connected with a lesion of that size but there have been cases that I've seen in the past 10 years where the tooth has tested positive but there's a lesion and it resolves after root canal is done so I'm hoping that my test are wrong and just a root canal suffices now what if it doesn't then we'll have to go in there surgically And clean out the area at the bottom of that too and place a bone graft and whatever tissue be removed from there we can send it for biopsy to make sure nothing else is going on your”

Is this my best route??

 

[Gordon]

A lesion is just jargon for an area of abnormal tissue. Don't fret about it.

The most likely reason for this area being there is what the endodontist suggests, one of the incisors root canal systems is not working properly. We commonly see this after some trauma if it's affecting the incisor teeth, which is why you were being asked about it. The pulp (what people call the nerve in a tooth) is not just a bundle of nerve tissue, it also carries blood into and out of the tooth. Occasionally the nerve bit can be fine (so you'd still get positive results from pulp testing as above) but the blood vessels are non-functional and you can get a lesion like this forming.

I think the treatment suggested sounds reasonable, so yes, that would be the best route.