cyst above root canal

[Jabari]

I had a root canal carried out abroad about 6 years ago. The tooth initially caused some pain but later settled down and has been fine upto recently. Recently my dentist took an X-ray of the tooth and told me that there is a cyst above the root canal.

He told me that I need to go to the hospital to have the cyst removed there surgically. I would like to know if there are any alternative treatments available for this cyst above the root canal other than surgery at the hospital.

[Dr Mohsen J. Esfahani]

Hi

Thank you for your post. Without seeing you its very difficult for me to reply to this post. Generally speaking, if a cyst is small and the implicated tooth has a poor root canal, one could try a re-root canal treatment / extraction first and that might reduce the cyst or get rid of the small cyst altogether. If it does not then cyst enucleation surgery will be necessary.

If the cyst is large, one would still have to do re-root canal treatment / extraction on the failed tooth but this is unlikely to work by itself and the patient will have to have cyst enucleation surgery as well.