Root Canal Questions - Dental Health Message Board

arkie6 · 11-12-2000, 09:59 PM

A couple of years ago I had a crack develop in one of my lower molars (just in front of my wisdom tooth which I still have). This crack evenutally ended up with an abcess. I then had a root canal and a crown installed and everything was fine for a year or so. One day my crown popped off while chewing some gum. I had the crown replaced (had to have a new one due to crunching the old one) and periodically ever since I have intermittent throbbing in that tooth. I went back to the DDS that did the initial root canal and he suspected some infection. He gave me some antibiotics and that took care of the pain after several days. He also took some X-rays and probed around a bit and said something about a little bit of bone loss and also showed me a tool that he used to probe around the gumline. He said that it went in farther than it should. He mentioned that he may have to pull the tooth. He was concerned that the previous crack my be letting in bacteria. I guess my question is what are my options here. Could he go back in and redo the root canal and help the situation?. I've read a little about pulp canal sealers (Kerr Sealer?) and the use of warm gutta-percha (I don't think he used that initially). Are there any better ways to seal the pulp canal? I guess that I just want to be able to go back in and be able to ask the right questions before he yanks my tooth. If the tooth does come out, what are my options? Bridge? (I hate the idea of grinding down two perfectly healthy adjacent teeth) Implant? (He mentioned a nerve in the jawbone there that if hit could cause loss of feeling on that side of the face. He said this is low liklihood, but possible). If the tooth is pulled and nothing done for a while, wouldn't new bone eventually fill in the hole that was left? If so, would this be sufficient to anchor an implant without getting too close to the nerve?

Bonnie · 11-13-2000, 06:57 AM

It sounds like the crack is definatly allowing bcateria to reinfect the tooth.

If there is alot of bone lose(if the tooth has more then a 5mm reading from the probe) around the tooth it wouldnt be benefical to have the tooth retreated .if you decide to have to the tooth extracted at the time the DDS can place artifical bone which is very routine and then after things have healed he can do a implant.
The waiting period on this varies form situation to situation.Your DDS would be the best judge of that for you .If you do nothing after the extraction it would be a matter of time before your other teeth would start drifting and bone lose would occur around those teeth.
The gutta percha sealer for RCT is the most common form of completing a RCT ,if the DDS used silver points ,yes those can be removed sometimes and the RCT can be retreated.have you thought about getting a second a opinion froma endodontist, that might but your mond at ease .:confussed: