Severe toothache
Posted , 3 users are following.
I'm in the UK.
Saturday before last I woke up with severe toothache in the bottom
molar next to the back one. I had my wisdom teeth removed 25 years ago.
I went to the emergency dentist who gave me amoxicillin and recommended
removal later in the week.
My own dentist after examining me added metronidazole and x rays and booked
me for removal last Saturday.
On Saturday he tells me he can't do it in the general setting and has referred me
to an oral/max fax surgeon. The roots are bent and the abscess is large in the bone.
He gave me more metronidazole and some morphine. I have quite bad heart disease.
What does this sort of removal entail? Will I just be left in this abject agony to fend for myself?
I just think it's unethical to simply leave me while the hospital take their sweet time
calling me in. What, if anything, can I do?
0 likes, 5 replies
lily65668 Diary
Posted
A maxillofacial surgeon is the best person for the job. I've had two complicated extractions by maxfac - both due to infection getting into the bone due to poor dental work - and it's no different to having it done at the dentist's. Both were done under local anaesthesia, but I understand a maxfac is authorised to do more complicated nerve blocks than an ordinary dentist, to ensure no pain is felt.
I'm not in the UK, which is where I suspect you are, so can't say anything about how long you'll have to wait. However, if the pain is so severe you're having to have morphine I think you should be seen asap. Can you ask your dentist to follow up? Another possibility if you're in a really bad way is to go to A&E at a major university hospital. They can usually call someone in, particularly if you go on a weekday during office hours. But it has to be a major hospital, with full facilities. No point going to a walk-in at a community hospital.
Hope you can soon get some help.
Diary lily65668
Posted
kitty13236 Diary
Posted
Diary
Posted
I just wanted to follow this up.
I eventually 2 weeks after this got the tooth out by a max fax surgeon.
Because the tooth was so bad I had to have a bone graft although this only
involved 'digging' out the jaw under where the tooth was and packing it with
mushed up cadaver bone then stitching over it.
Although the jaw and gum is not fully healed yet I'm being closely monitored.
Thank you all for your advise.
lily65668 Diary
Posted
So glad you got the help you needed! And thank you for coming back and letting us know how you got on.
Just a word of advice. In both the cases I described in my post of 3 months ago I also had infection going into the bone. In both cases the maxfax had to scrape out the layer of infected bone and stitch the socket up over it, but it didn't require a graft.
Both healed perfectly in not much longer than the time it takes a normal extraction to heal, and the infection never recurred. However, I've been left with occasional twinges in both sockets - especially the first one, which was done 25 years ago. Several dentists have told me that this would have been due to minor nerve damage because of the complexity of the extractions. (It took more than 30 mins to get the first one out, because the infection was so bad, the tooth had ankylosed into the socket.)
I've never had to take anything for these "twinges", though in the worse of the two cases - upper second molar - they can occasionally make me jump. However, this situation hasn't got any worse over the years, and routine two-yearly X-rays have never shown any kind of disease process.
I'm not telling you this to scare you, and it's not really something to be scared of anyway. Just to say that you shouldn't panic if you start getting occasional shooting pains in the extraction sites way down the line. As long as you're getting regular dental inspections, everything should be OK.