Possible exposed dentin whilst smoothing jagged wisdom tooth?

[darren1]

I have been fighting with a wisdom tooth (upper) that occasionally causes injury to my cheek - I normally put up with it as it happens rarely e.g. once per 6 months.

My dentist is extremely cautious of removing teeth for some reason.

I don't know what the technical term is but today he has drilled the tooth (no anesthetic ) in order make a paricular section less sharp. He kept going back and drilling more to stop the irritation on my cheek.

Suddenly ZING, i had a sharp pain run right though the tooth and my jaw - he immediately stopped.
He then decided to stop saying he can't shave anymore.

I asked him afterwards if it will now be sensitive but he said it shouldn't because he didn't go as far as the dentin.

If he didn't go as far as the dentin what on earth was that pain? Has he bodged it??

1 hr later i feel i am still getting tingling sensations from it.

He has asked me to come back in 1 month if ulcer on cheek does not go away and have the tooth extracted.

 

[Tink]

Hi darren -

I'm not a dentist, but I did have the same sort of treatment done very recently and my dentist told me quite a bit about it, so I may be able to shed some light on it.

Mine was the same as yours, smoothing down a jagged edge on a wisdom tooth where it was sometimes catching the inside of my cheek.

With regards to why the dentist is reluctant to remove it - not sure where you are, but certainly in the UK dentists are much less quick to remove wisdom teeth than they used to be. This is to do with the balance of risks. It used to be that they would remove wisdom teeth almost as a precaution against future problems - but more recently studies have shown that removing all those wisdom teeth unnecessarily causes more trouble overall than it solves. These days UK dentists work on a "3 strikes and it's out" basis - so there have to be 3 acute episodes of the tooth causing a problem before they will look to remove it.

Re smoothing it down and reaching the dentin - he probably didn't go all the way through.

My dentist did explain this to me - I was a bit unsure about doing it without anaesthetic, so we talked over the process at length. He mentioned in passing that doing it without anaesthetic is actually quite useful for the dentist, as the patient starting to feel something acts as an early warning sign that they are getting near to the end of the enamel and it's time to stop (as your dentist did). The impression I got is that you'd start to feel it before he reaches the dentin, so feeling it doesn't mean he was right through. Basically, the closer you get, the more sensitive it will become. I don't get the impression your dentist has bodged it, it sounds very much like he was following the usual way of doing this.


Give it a while to settle - it most likely will - and if it still hurts after a couple of weeks then go back and get the dentist to take a look.