• Dental Phobia Support

    Welcome! This is an online support group for anyone who is has a severe fear of the dentist or dental treatment. Please note that this is NOT a general dental problems or health anxiety forum! You can find a list of them here.

    Register now to access all the features of the forum.

In need of a Root Canal?

P

plasmaticdw

Junior member
Joined
Feb 12, 2021
Messages
4
Location
UK
Hi,

I'm been stung by bad dentist advice and practice before. My dentist thinks that my tooth is infected, says the infection is quite close to infecting another tooth, where I'd be in need of treating two teeth instead of one.

She tested if my tooth was sensitive to something cold, then took an x-ray to check. My tooth was sensitive. The thing that makes me lack of confidence in going through with her suggestion is that she doesn't know what could have caused the tooth to be infected. Since she says she can't see a reason, saying the tooth isn't particularly unhealthy.

She also described a tooth like this as a "tooth on borrowed time" and losing my teeth is something that causes me a lot of anxiety, I've had nightmares about it at times. And going through this root canal sounds like it destines my tooth to be extracted at some point, she quoted around 15 years it could be develop problems again.

If its going to affect another tooth, I suppose I won't have any choice but to get it done. But I want to be sure I'm making the right decision before I do, as I also cannot see the infection on the x-rays. I'd appreciate it if someone could point out where it is. It is on one of my front teeth.

I'm also not feeling any pain or troubles at the moment with my tooth, so I also really just don't want to cause the pain associated with a root canal for no reason as well.

Any advice or information to give me some more confidence in this would be appreciated.
 

Attachments

  • thumbnail_image001.jpg
    thumbnail_image001.jpg
    7.7 KB · Views: 24
  • thumbnail_image002.jpg
    thumbnail_image002.jpg
    17.6 KB · Views: 24
  • thumbnail_image003.jpg
    thumbnail_image003.jpg
    17.2 KB · Views: 16
Well, she's right about the infection, there's clearly an infected area at the apex of that central incision on the x-ray. Chances are the nerve has died off due to the large filling in the tooth, but it could be trauma.
It's not true that infection spreads from one tooth into another, but apart from that, the central incisor does need a root canal treatment.
 
Well, she's right about the infection, there's clearly an infected area at the apex of that central incision on the x-ray. Chances are the nerve has died off due to the large filling in the tooth, but it could be trauma.
It's not true that infection spreads from one tooth into another, but apart from that, the central incisor does need a root canal treatment.

Thanks for the reply.

That is strange, since the filling has been there for over a decade now and the tooth hasn't been under much trauma.

How urgent is the problem to treat? Should I get a root canal ASAP? Or would it be alright to wait it out? How fast does this infection spread?
 
It doesn't "spread" at all.
Bit of a long explanation, sorry.

The chances are the nerve quietly died soon after or just before the filling was done. The dead nerve then gets invaded by bacteria, which your body can't attack because the nerve is dead and has no blood supply.
Eventually the bacteria spill out into the space at the top of the root where your body's defences can get to them. If the bacteria aren't particularly virulent or your body's defences are in good shape you get a sort of stalemate, which is where you are now. The white cells etc kill off the bacteria they can get to, but more will keep coming out of the tooth so the cycle continues.
That's fine until something upsets the balance, either you get a more aggressive bacteria into the area or your body's defences get weakened by something. Heavy cold, stress, flu that kind of thing. Then it all kicks off and you get pain/swelling etc.

There's absolutely no way of knowing when/if that'll happen so if you can afford the time and expense, it's better to get it sorted now.
 
It doesn't "spread" at all.
Bit of a long explanation, sorry.

The chances are the nerve quietly died soon after or just before the filling was done. The dead nerve then gets invaded by bacteria, which your body can't attack because the nerve is dead and has no blood supply.
Eventually the bacteria spill out into the space at the top of the root where your body's defences can get to them. If the bacteria aren't particularly virulent or your body's defences are in good shape you get a sort of stalemate, which is where you are now. The white cells etc kill off the bacteria they can get to, but more will keep coming out of the tooth so the cycle continues.
That's fine until something upsets the balance, either you get a more aggressive bacteria into the area or your body's defences get weakened by something. Heavy cold, stress, flu that kind of thing. Then it all kicks off and you get pain/swelling etc.

There's absolutely no way of knowing when/if that'll happen so if you can afford the time and expense, it's better to get it sorted now.


Thanks for the explanation, long explanations help a lot. Makes everything easier to understand.

If the balance does get upset, how bad can it be? Or is there no way to really tell? I've heard that abcesses form and such, causing a lot of pain. I don't know if that causes any additional problems/treatment needed on the dental side of things.
 
I will urge you to get that root canal as soon as possible. I had a chip in my front tooth as a kid, and it was fixed with a filling. It never bothered me at all for over 20 years. As Gordon was telling you, the nerve died slowly and without any pain so I never even noticed it. I had regular dental checkups and it was never detected. Two years ago I had some tenderness and pain when biting with that tooth. Nothing excessively painful but it would hurt alongside my nose and felt almost like sinus pain (which I thought it was at first). I finally went in a few months later and it turned out to be a very large abscess. I had a root canal and an apicoectomy, but the infection was too much and I ended up having to have the tooth extracted, the area manually cleaned out, and an implant placed. If I had caught it earlier and had a root canal before it got that bad, I may have been able to save the tooth. If the nerve has died, you may not feel any pain until it is really bad like mine was. You are lucky that yours was caught before the infection in really bad.
The root canal on a front tooth is not bad at all. It doesn’t hurt and doesn’t take as long as a molar one.
 
You've already got an abscess :)
The big issue really is that you can't predict when it'll go "boom" so teeth being the awkward little beasties that they are, it'll be the most inconvenient time possible. 2 am before your wedding day for instance :)
 
You've already got an abscess :)
The big issue really is that you can't predict when it'll go "boom" so teeth being the awkward little beasties that they are, it'll be the most inconvenient time possible. 2 am before your wedding day for instance :)

Can confirm this to be extremely accurate. I was on vacation in Chicago with my boyfriend for our shared birthday when my teeth decided to go Postal on me and now I'm currently setting up appointments to get my 2 infected wisdom teeth out, 2 broken and rotten molars out, and a root canal to save my right front tooth that has also developed an abscess. My mouth is a total mess and my dental journey will be very long and painful(both emotionally and physically) to fix.

While It's a lot of work and gonna cost me thousands before I'm done and completely pain free, my mouth can't wait anymore. I waited too long and now I'm constantly in severe pain, feeling sick, can't eat or sleep well and suffering panic attacks daily. Do not be like me and wait. If you can get it done sooner, do so before the real pain and suffering sets in. I thought I had more time, but I didn't. It ruined not only my 30th birthday and the ending of our vacation, but also my boyfriend's chance to propose to me after 4 and half years together.

We're engaged now and I'm still happy, but our beautiful plans went out the window and we can't get that perfect moment back. A hard, very hard lesson learned and now I have to learn to live with that guilt and to forgive myself for being so short-sighted. I will make sure my mouth never gets this bad again, because I don't want the pain, emotional suffering, and financial hardship to ever steal away good memories and happiness from my life. I don't care how scared I am to work on facing my dental phobia, it's not the worth the loss of those things most precious to me. I want my life back and to be in control of my fear and not the other way around.
 
Back
Top