Dental pain

[Craig]

Hello

I have had dental pain all night last night and now the tooth is really hurting very badly and keeping me from getting on with my daily life.

I had a tooth filled about a month ago and the dentist said that the tooth had a lot of decay and I think the pain is probably coming from that tooth.

I would like to know what you recommend for stopping this dental pain? Is it possible that the filling has caused the pain and if so, what sort of treatment will the tooth need now?

[Dr Vahid Motahar]

Hi,

Thank you for your question.

Teeth that have a have a lot of decay and deep filling and the decay is close to the nerve house of the tooth can develop dental pain. What is ideal for the pain first is dental treatment by means of assessing the tooth and making a diagnosis and then treatment of the tooth. In most cases these kind of pain, specially when it is worse at night, is what we call irreversible pulpitis which in short it means you need to have root canal treatment. The best pain relieve for these teeth is immediate extirpation. That means removing the nerve to relive correct the immediate problem (pain) then starting the root canal treatment.

When the tooth id acutely painful and intense, pain killers have limited effect and the best solution is extirpation. Otherwise the best pain killers can be anti-inflammatory drugs like Ibuprofen.