At the moment, I am awaiting an upcoming root canal of a tooth that pretty cracked clean in half. In the meantime, I am having recurring abscesses that come on all of a sudden – one moment, the gum underneath the tooth is fine. A few hours later, tangible swelling has begun and by the following morning, a walnut-sized lump has formed.
So far, as each abscess has formed, my dentist has prescribed antibiotics and the swelling has gone down within 36-48 hours after I began the course of antibiotics.
Because of the abscess’s recurrence, I’ve been researching ways to fight off the abscess on my own, without having to call the dentist. The best information that I can find is that salt water rinses may sooth the swelling, but the abscess will never go away for good without antibiotics.
That got me thinking … an abscess is an infection. The body fights off infections all the time. You cut your finger, don’t get it cleaned out promptly, and it gets infected – red puffy skin around the cut, etc. Except in extreme cases, though, your body can still handle it – the cut will heal on its own and the infection will be defeated.
So, why not the same for dental abscesses? Perhaps the following two things are true: (a) the body can, in fact, fight off a mild abscess, however (b) an abscess that gets to the point of tangible swelling is no longer a mild one, but has become an “extreme case”.
My understanding is that at abscess, in general, occurs when your body basically switches strategies from wiping out the infection, to “containment”. There’s a ball of pus that’s very hard for bacteria to get out of (which is good), but also very hard for immune cells to get into, which makes clearing the infection that way difficult.
teeth have very little blood circulation, and most of the infection fighting is done via white blood cells. - teeth are wet & warm, good environment for infections to grow. And food crumbs present to feed on.
teeth are exposed to foreign materials (food) that includes bacteria.
tooth abscesses have only limited exposure to air, so anaerobic bacteria can grow better.
All these factors can work together to make a tooth abscess a long & painful fight (speaking from personal experience!).
my dentist told me that antibiotics will work for a short time but the infection will come back. So that’s why they do root canals, they can clean it out all the way.
The alternative to antibiotics and a root canal is the abscess bursting, allowing it to drain. If it ruptures in a way that leads from the abscess to the outside world the puss and yuck drains out. If it ruptures differently it just pours all that gunk back into your system, where it can get into your blood stream and start causing REALLY bad problems.
I’ve seen some truly horrific pictures of tooth abscesses that went nuts and the results look like acid or something dissolve the jaw and facial bones before the victim succumbed. Of course, some people managed to fight off the infection even after things got bad, but there could still be permanent damage done.
So… take your antibiotics and get that root canal or whatever is required to permanently take care of the problem.
Modern dentistry makes people forget that dental infections would kill people pretty regularly even up into the 1900’s. Yanking all infected teeth and getting dentures was SOP until just a few decades ago. Nothing to be taken lightly.