cindyanne

Hi there:

Here's a breakdown of my problem: My dentist drilled a hole in the floor of my mouth under my tongue because the drill accidentally slipped while drilling a molar. Ow. It was a very deep hole, and thus is still fairly uncomfortable 2 days later, and as of yet, doesn't seem to be infected, but seems a little too red for my liking. I'm keeping a close eye on it and being extra-attentive to oral hygiene. Also, I required a cavity get drilled, yet it was in a tooth with old amalgam, so he had to remove all old traces of amalgam. Including some that was previously filling a round hole in my tooth from a previous cavity being drilled out on the front SIDE of my molar. When the drilling was done, and it was time to fill my cavity, he added the vise thingy to my molar (the band that squeezes the tooth together for filling), and must not have seen the original round spot where he had drilled out an old filling. The only amalgam that is there now is what he pushed through the tooth's top opening when filling the newly drilled out decay on the top side of the molar. In other words, there's a hole with a little amalgam pushed through it, but with a jagged edge, and incompletely filled. I also have a sort of faint clicking noise in the recently "filled" (if you want to call it that) tooth, which seems most noticeable when water or air moves around the tooth area. It's also reproducible by pushing gently with my tongue against the tongue-side of said molar, which seems to indicate to me that the filling has a crack, or canal in it due to the shoddy filling job. In the drilling process, he cleared all decay with drill/spoon device (to avoid more painful drilling), and then said since it was near the root he would add a "base" layer before the amalgam. He applied this base layer, then placed gauze between my teeth and said to bite down. He then left me there for ten minutes (to work on another of two additional patients he was seeing concurrently while working on me), to let the base harden. Then dental assistant came over, took out the gauze, and said "It's hardened now." He came back and said okay and started filling, but not before saying he had to clean out some of the gauze that had hardened into the base material.

Questions:

1) Is my filling loose and in need of replacement? Or is there some strange readjustment process that your teeth go through after having work done on them that would cause a similar noise/unstable feeling?

2) How likely is it that I could get some sort of serious infection from the hole underneath my tongue? When it happened, he applied gauze and some topical something or other that tasted really bad and was supposed to induce clotting. It stopped bleeding by time I left, but it was a fairly deep hole, accompanied by a jagged tear in the tissue under my tongue where the drill travelled until settling into drill a hole. Is there anything I can do specifically to lower my odds of resulting infection? Are there any symptoms to watch out for other than redness and fever?

3) I'm not a rocket scientist, but isn't it contrary to common sense to apply a gauze pad to something you're expecting to harden UNDERNEATH a "permanent" filling??

4) Is any of this considered malpractice?

Thanks for reading. I still have a filling to have done (the worse of the two originally detected, and a possible root canal candidate), and I don't think I should go back there, but if these things are just common and unfortunate coincidences that happen to every dentist from time to time, perhaps I should be less concerned, although, if this is so, what assurance do I have that they won't happen again?

Slowly developing dento-phobia!!

Thanks for reading and hopefully responding.