Hi sarahgee,

What your dentist may not have told you is that root canaled teeth are always infected to some degree because during the root canal procedure the nerve tissue cannot be removed from the microscopic canals. So the tooth always harbors some degree of infection from the dead nerves inside those canals. In some people the tooth flares up with symptoms soon after the rc procedure in other people it can take years for symptoms to develop. However, in either case there is an infection developing.

If you had an abscess which is typical of a root canaled tooth for the reasons that I mentioned above, then the antibiotics temporarily subsided the inflammation associated with the infection. Which could make the tooth look somewhat "better" on the recent xray. But in reality the infection was still present.

Did you see a general dentist or an oral surgeon? Do you know if the dentist scrape the bone clean of the periodontal ligament or did he just remove the tooth and put a piece of gauze in your mouth?

Do you know if there was a cyst at the end of the root tip prior to the extraction? This would show up on the xray as a black circle at the root tip just in case the dentist mentioned it or showed it to you on the xray.

Bryanna