Hi, apologies if this has been answered somewhere below but i couldn’t find an exact answer to my query.

I had a bottom molar tooth extracted last Thursday so we are now on day four after a long running saga with toothache. I had a filling replaced six weeks ago which went down to the nerve and apparently aggravated it. After many sleepless nights and the fact it wasn’t getting any better I had an x-ray last Tuesday which didn’t show any signs of an abscess however it was decided I had two choices, either root canal or removal. I decided to have it extracted however in the two days between x-ray and actually removing the tooth my face swelled up and the pain intensified. Although there was now swelling and it looked like an abscess had formed we decided to go ahead with the extraction anyway (although only if the injections worked) which they did and the tooth was pulled.

My question is this, we are now on day four and the extraction site appears to be healing fine however the infection or redness & swelling between gum and tooth hasn’t yet gone away. I am on a 7 day course of antibiotics (4 days in) and wondered how long we would expect the infection to remain in this area after the tooth has been extracted?

Any advice is appreciated.

Hi Massey,

The drilling and restoration you had done on the tooth 6 weeks ago went down to the nerve because of any number of reasons. Here are some possibilities .... *you had decay beyond the old filling that needed to be removed and the decay was either close to or touching a nerve ... *the decay may not have been that deep but the drilling itself may have been too deep ... *the trauma of drilling in an already inflamed tooth or drilling close to the nerves could have caused an irreversible pulpitis (inflammation of the nerve). The fact that you developed swelling several days after the restoration indicates the severity of the inflammation inside of the tooth and that the tooth was more than likely harboring an infection that was not picked up on the original xray because it was too small and/or the angle the xray was taken at didn't show the location of it. Dental xrays are only 2 dimensional and teeth are multi dimensional so until an infection has become large enough to be captured on a typical dental xray, it will not be picked up.

The fact that you were able to get numb for the extraction indicates that the infection may have still been contained to the tooth and had not proliferated beyond the tooth yet. Or the dentist was able to administer a specific type of injection in an area that is different than the typical injection and site for some extractions. With that type of injection, anesthesia is usually quite effective even when there is inflammation and infection.

You stated.. << the infection or redness & swelling between gum and tooth hasn’t yet gone away.>>
Was the entire tooth extracted? Can you clarify the area that you are referring to?

Are you brushing and flossing the adjacent teeth to the extraction site?

Bryanna