Everything seems fine with your tooth but then one day it starts to ache or it is sensitive when you drink hot and cold things.  Sometimes the first signs of a tooth abscessing are very minor and then one day it is a full blown tooth ache. It will have a consistent ache and throb like there is a heartbeat in it. If left alone,  swelling may occur with a blister that appears above the gum line near the tooth that hurts and the infection may cause death if not treated because the infection can get into your blood stream.

When you go to the dentist for the tooth ache, he will take an x-ray of the tooth to see how bad the infection is and to see which tooth it is. He then will send you home with an antibiotic and maybe pain medication. The reason he starts you on an antibiotic first is to try to get rid of most of the infection. If  the dentist tried to do a root canal the day you came in with the tooth ache,  it would cause more pain because it is very hard to get a tooth numb where there is infection. So, the dentist should start you on an antibiotic and wait a few days for it to take effect.

If you do not take a strong enough antibiotic or if you do not let the medication work for a few days, it could hurt when the root canal is done. The cause: there is still a lot of infection and inflammation around the tooth thus making it difficult to get numb. So, don’t be upset if you return in a few days to the dentist office to have the root canal done and he sends you home with a different antibiotic and waits a few more days because you are still in pain—pain is a sign of infection still present. It is so beneficial for you to wait because ultimately you will have a painless root canal by getting rid of the infection.

It is also important not to wait to have the root canal done after the medication is finished because the infection will come right back and the pain will return. So, if you have to have one done in the future— have a painless one!

So you go to the dentist with a tooth ache and he tells you that you need a root canal done because the nerve of the tooth or the root of the tooth has abscessed. You had the root canal done and the tooth is still bothering you. Let’s talk about some reasons that the tooth may still be hurting you.

Soreness

Normally, a tooth will be sensitive and sore for a week or two after the root canal is done. It really depends on how much infection was in the root of the tooth when the root canal was performed. We usually recommend our patients to be on an antibiotic for at least 3 days before to help clear up the infection and to aid in healing.The soreness that you may experience over the next two weeks is coming from the inflammation in the root because of the infection that had been there before the root canal and as it heals the soreness will go away.

Throbbing Pain

If you are still having sensativity 2 weeks after the root canal was done and the pain continues to get worse it maybe that a root was missed. The anterior teeth usually only have one root and the bicuspids have one to two roots while the molars can have two to five roots. When the dentist or endodontist does a root canal on your tooth they may miss a root because it is not seen in the x-ray because one root may be positioned right behind the other one. If you are experiencing throbbing pain that will not go away along with swelling 3 weeks after the root canal, you really need to call the dentist that did the root canal so that they can take an x-ray and figure out what is wrong with the tooth. You may end up having to have the tooth retreated with a root canal.

Pain When Chewing

If you are experiencing pain with the tooth only when you bite down on it or apply pressure then you may have a fracture or crack in the tooth or root of the tooth. If you trully have a crack in the root or in the tooth the pain will not go away and it will be there every time you bite down or apply pressure to that side of the tooth that is cracked. There is no way to fix a tooth that has a crack in it or in the root– the only fix is to have the tooth removed. We recommend that a crown be placed on your tooth a week after the root canal is done because it is easy for the tooth to crack without the blood supply going through it anymore.