Yoba,

The referral to the oral surgeon is smart.... the apicoectomy is not and here's are a few reasons why.

There is no question that all root canaled teeth are unhealthy and infected. One reason is because the many hundreds of tiny canals cannot be cleaned out which means they will always contain infected nerve tissue. The infection eventually spreads beyond these canals into the jaw bone.
Secondly like every other area of the body, teeth require blood to be able circulate through it in order to be healthy. The root canal procedure permanently cuts off the blood vessel supplying the tooth nutrition rendering the tooth non vital.

Keeping those things in mind.... irrelevant of what is done to the tooth or to the bone above the tooth the tooth will remain infected. An apicoectomy is a barbaric oral surgery that does nothing more to "cure" the tooth than the root canal procedure did. In fact the apico causes more inflammation, more bacteria and causes the bone to continually break down around the tooth.

Unfortunately, the only way to cure the problem is to remove the source of the problem which is the tooth. If you decide to extract the tooth, it would be best to have an oral surgeon do the extraction, not your general dentist.

Bryanna


QUOTE=yoba;1018510]Dear Bryanna, now the dentist suggests I go to an oral surgeon for an apicocetomy. He says maybe that will sort out the cause of infection???[/QUOTE]