Originally Posted by Bryanna

Hi Mr Outsider,

I am in the dental field and can offer you some information here.

Your initial tooth problem may have had 2 issues going on. One was it had a deep cavity which was close to the nerve and after the cavity was excavated and the tooth was filled the symptoms lingered. This indicates that the nerve was irritated and the tooth was on a slow path to a problem sometime down the road. The second issue with this tooth could be that it is fractured. When a tooth has deep decay and a large filling (I am going to assume it was an amalgam/mercury/metal filling) is placed in the tooth, the filling expands and contracts with hot and cold temperatures which results in movement of the filling material causing microscopic openings in the filling. At the same time, the pressure on the outer walls of the tooth from chewing on this large filling often result in a fracture in one or more of those walls which could also be microscopic. This would account for all of the symptoms that you have described and they could wax and wane from time to time until the nerve tissue from all of this ongoing irritation becomes so irritated and inflamed that bacteria that has been getting into these cracks decides to set up house inside the tooth.

Let's fast forward to the bump on your gum below this tooth....
This is most likely a fistula that has formed and is the result of the bacteria spreading from the inside of the tooth to the jawbone. It can be hard or soft and it is usually pus filled. It is not self contained and no your body is not isolating the infection. The formation of the fistula is the body's way of trying to find a way to drain the bacteria because it is building up inside of the tooth. Fistulas are usually sore but they may not produce a whole lot of pain until or unless a large swelling occurs.

A fistula can occur in many places in the body. But when it is related to an infected tooth it indicates that the infection has burrowed a hole through the tooth and formed a tunnel through the bone trying to find a way to release or drain the pressure and infection. This tunnel of infection results in deterioration of the bone and the longer the source of infection is present, which is the tooth, the further the bone deterioration will occur. Keeping the tooth, irrelevant of what is done to it, will not favorably alter the status of the infection.

The root canal procedure irrelevant of how well or how poorly it is done cannot sterilize or make a tooth healthy again because there is no access to the hundreds of tiny canals that will continue to contain infected nerve tissue. It is also important to be informed about the chemicals used to disinfect and kill off nerve tissue. These chemicals are very toxic and can cause systemic health problems as they cannot be rinsed free from the tooth so they will travel with the bacteria as it moves from the tooth into the bone and beyond.

Root canal therapy is most often presented to a patient as a "cure all" when a tooth becomes infected. The terms often associated with this are "save or keep" the tooth. In dentistry those terms when used in the context of a root canal or an apicoectomy (surgical root canal) simply mean "to retain" an unhealthy tooth for an uncertain amount of time.

I get the impression that you are concerned about the systemic risks associated with "retaining" this tooth and have been doing some research on that. Most of what you will find on the internet is either from lay people who mean well but are not truly knowledgeable about the subject and from other sources that promote root canal therapy as a cure all. The information that I offer here is not easily available in free literature to the public. It is found in dental and medical journals or publications purchased by those in the industry. However, you can find some information on some holistic dental or medical sites where practitioners are talking openly about it, as I do here.

I hope this was helpful to you..
Bryanna