I have been having ongoing pain that sorta seems to always be there, but get worse every so often after I had two root canals done right next to each other 3 months ago in my upper right jaw. One root canal was retreated and still there is pain. The pain is a dull ache around the area of the gum of my root canaled teeth. The endodontist is puzzled, my dentist is puzzled. I went to my primary care physician and he gave me a cat scan to test my sinuses. However, the dentist thinks I could have trigeminal neuralga or atypical facial pain. I have researched TN and I do not have the symptoms of it. The sharp shooting pains and a trigger point. Mine is just an ache in my gum above the teeth.
So I went to a neurologist and I feel he did a terrible job. He told me without examining me at all, only hearing my story, that he does not think I have TN, but I should go ahead and take tegretol for a month to see if this is what is causing my pain. I do not want to take a medicine with so many side effects if they don't even think that is what it is.
I personally believe that I am in a 2% of people with a failed root canal even though it looks fine on xray. I have pain still when I bite with those teeth. But the endodontist did not want to pull the tooth unless I had checked into this. Because if they pull it and it is a nerve, well I'll still have pain and be left with one less tooth.
Any advice or opinions on if this could be TN or ATFP? Anyone out there have it?
Hummm. This is tough. Has all questions concerning the root canal been ruled out? I think the endo is right. You could end up with TN if the nerve is damaged due to tugging as the tooth is being pulled and then be worse off then when you first started. Is there anyway it can be proven with out a doubt that there isn't a problem with the root canal?
First of all, thank you for your response! I actually went to a different dentist yesterday and he took an xray and this time a fracture showed up on xray on the first root canaled tooth. The fracture was across the root and the tooth could not be saved. He thought this has probably been the reason for all of my pain. So I had it extracted yesterday and the pain is so much better. It hurts where the tooth came out as it was a big molar, but the pain is different than it was before. So I have my fingers crossed that he fixed me! Before, any pain meds I took didn't help much, but now they seem to help a lot with the inflammation and such. I'll let you know if things don't work out! Thanks again for your response.
