Hi Chalky,

I would suggest that you only see an oral surgeon for the evaluation of the sinus and extraction of that molar. Not a general dentist and not someone affiliated with the dentist who removed that wisdom tooth. You want an objective opinion and treatment, not one that may be biased in any way.


Regarding your question about the dentist thinking the rc tooth looked "good" in spite of the tenderness when he tapped on it. There is a great deal of emphasis put on dentists during their education to go to great measures to "retain" teeth by doing root canals. The procedures to do that are very lucrative for the dentist and they are the only available option for the patient to temporarily keep their sick tooth. At the same time, dentists are also taught that root canal therapy cannot and does not make an infected tooth healthy again. It is very unfortunate that dental patients are not openly informed by the dentist about that fact prior to giving consent to having the root canal done. Hopefully as more and more people become self educated and better informed about root canals, they will start to question the dentist about the procedure and in time the information will be openly offered without the patient having to ask.

So the basic answer to your question.... a dentist suggests the root canal procedure to retain the tooth and then expects that tooth to have some problems. The dentist is accustomed to seeing the problems creep up in intensity on dental radio-graphs as time goes on and frequently dismisses them until they have become severe enough for him to suggest removal of the tooth. Some dentists will go a bit farther and let the patient determine the fate of their tooth so long as the radio graphic pathology has not become too widespread. One thing to note here.... dental radio-graphs are only a 2 dimensional image therefore depending the angle the film was taken, there could be a more widespread problem that is not being picked up on that x-ray and all dentists are aware of that.

Another note is that the infected nerve tissue that resides inside of the hundreds of tiny canals inside of all root canaled teeth are not visible on regular dental x-rays until the bacteria has caused those canals to become badly decayed or the bacteria has proliferated through those canals into the bone. So until that proliferation happens, a dentist will look at the x-ray and tell the patient... it looks good!

Also the "tool" he used during his evaluation of this tooth did not clean anything as there is no access to the inside of the tooth unless he were to drill into it and remove the root canal filling material. He may have used a scaling or probing instrument to check the pocketing around the circumference of the tooth.

I hope I have been able to explain the information clearly enough for you to understand as it can be a challenge to do that on the internet.

Let me know if you have any further concerns about this.

Bryanna