Originally Posted by Bryanna

HI annikasamper,

Most dentists will not tell their patients that root canaled teeth are infected. If you skim through many of the previous posts on this forum, you will see countless people with that same concern.

You do not have to have pain at all for the tooth to be infected. So it is irrelevant where you feel the pain or if you feel pain. Every tooth has many hundreds of microscopic canals that are not accessible therefore they will continue to contain dead, infected nerve tissue. This simply means that irrelevant of what is done to the tooth, the tooth remains infected. The infection will eventually spread to the bone because it cannot contain itself within those tiny canals indefinitely. From your description, the infection has already spread to the bone and that's why your dentists is talking to you about doing the surgery.

The surgery he is talking about is called an apicoectomy. To be truthful, this is a barbaric surgical procedure in which the dentist removes a piece of the bone above the root of the tooth, does a root canal procedure from the top of the tooth down, somewhat plugs up the hole in the bone with either a mercury filling or cement and then sutures the gum closed. This procedure does nothing to alter the infection inside of the tooth. It will however cause more inflammation, more pain and permanently ruin the integrity of the bone. Many dentists do not even recommend this procedure anymore because it serves no purpose.

I am sorry to give you this bad news. I am sorry to say that many dentists fail to inform their patients about the truth about root canaled and infected teeth.

It is your choice whether you want to wait and see what happens. But understand that even if the tooth feels better, it doesn't mean the infection is gone. It means it is draining which can affect your systemic health.

I know this is not an easy thing to deal with and I do wish you the best.
Bryanna