Ashley,
At the time of the tooth extraction, it is always necessary to remove the periodontal ligament and any necrotic tissue or bone. Anything that is left behind is a potential irritant and can become infected.
Your statement: <<She finally gets the tooth out, there is a ball of fleshy material attached to the root. She says that because she's gotten this out completely with the tooth, everything will heal perfectly. I ask about x-rays when I come back in because I am so concerned about getting a jawbone cavitation I need to know everything is healing up perfectly. She tells me it's not a problem.>>
That ball of flesh is a cyst that was caused by the bacteria that had spread from the tooth into the bone. Yes, removing the cyst is imperative. Many times it is very attached to the root end of the tooth. However, that cyst has nothing to do with the periodontal ligament. The ligament is wrapped around the circumference of the entire root structure of the tooth. It does not come out with the tooth it has to be scraped out. Some dentists rarely remove the ligament and others follow the proper protocol and remove it. Some people will have incomplete healing of the socket if the ligament is left in there, while others seem to heal okay. No one can predict the outcome. That is why it is IDEAL to remove it so as to decrease the risk of future complications. Your dentist is well aware of this.
She is not going to tell you anything different than she already has. Was she an oral surgeon or a general dentist?
An oral surgeon could go back in and re-surgerize the socket, but you may have difficulty finding someone to do that because no one wants to chime in on someone else's surgery. If there were to be a complication, then you would not know from which surgery it arose.
You are not alone in this situation. Most people will let time tell if there is a problem or not. Unfortunately, this dentist did not listen to your concerns or requests and from what you have described, she rushed into the entire procedure. Feel free to tell her that if that is how you genuinely feel!!
I hope everything heals well for you. Try not to stress too much about it. I understand how concerning this can be..... but there may be nothing you can do about it at this point.
Bryanna
The dentist was being lazy when she
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashley13
Hello!
I am so frustrated. In April this year I had a sore knot come up on the underside of my jaw. I called my dentist and she called in an Rx for antibiotics and told me to come in 2 days later. At that appointment, she took bite wing x rays and 'found' the problem. A darkened area on the root of tooth 31 (back bottom right). She told me this area had been there since I had a root canal - which she performed) in 2005/2006 and they were "watching it". I didn't know anything of it... noone had mentioned it to me in 8 years! That made me extremely mad, but at the same time, she's been my saving grace when it comes to mouth issues so I sort of let it slide. At that point I was given options of pulling the tooth, or having the root canal done again. By this time in my life I had embraced a more natural lifestyle and knew I would never again have another root canal so the option was to have it extracted.
I contacted a local biological dentist in May and had an initial consultation with him. I felt really good about his practices, but his office was really archaic and they weren't PPO on my insurance so everything would have to be paid upfront and partially reimbursed per insurance limits. We set up a time to have a full eval with all new x-rays and I was excited and anxious to get this taken care of! Well stupid me, I ended up forgetting the appointment altogether (I forgot to set a reminder in my phone) so I called the next day and apologized. I felt so embarrassed that I had wasted his time that I never called back.
Fast forward to last week I started having some health problems, stomach pains, weird numb headaches on the back of my head and it reminded me I needed to get to the dentist and have the tooth removed. I guess I thought I could wish it all away since I had already spent about 1500.00 or more (RC and crown) on the single tooth I would have to have removed. I called into the Dentist this morning and asked for their soonest appointment and told the receptionist my concerns. She ended up getting me in the next hour. She said I would be able to talk to the Dr about my concerns once I got there.
So I get there, they start going over all the paperwork, all the rules, signing papers etc. Dr comes in and numbs me.. I'm like will I be able to talk to you before this is all done? I'm really anxious about how this will be done so she sits me up after 3 shots and we talk. I tell her I am really concerned with the infected tissues around the tooth, the infected bone. I ask her if she plans to remove any of the dead tissues and she keeps pressing me that it's unnecessary that once the tooth is removed the infection will get better etc. I'm fuzzy. Those shots speed my mind and body up and make my extremely anxious so I'm not saying what I've looked into the way I need to say it. I tell her I am concerned about anaerobic bacteria about the dead bone and ligaments but she says the tooth is like a splinter. Even if it's infected once you remove the splinter it will heal. She says she will know more once she's in there. I finally just let her go on with it when it seems I'm not making any headway at all.
She finally gets the tooth out, there is a ball of fleshy material attached to the root. She says that because she's gotten this out completely with the tooth, everything will heal perfectly. I ask about x-rays when I come back in because I am so concerned about getting a jawbone cavitation I need to know everything is healing up perfectly. She tells me it's not a problem.
Fast forward to now, I'm FREAKING out. I really really really wish I would have had an oral surgeon do this extraction because I don't feel as though my concerns were being taken seriously. I really wanted the periodontal ligaments removed. I really wanted all the dead bone to be scraped and I went ahead and let her pull the tooth without doing either. 
Do I have any options at this point? |