Infected Retained Root Fragment #19

[bgburke]

In 2012 my #19 wisdom tooth became abscessed. I was in such enormous pain for a month and finally it became unbearable so I visited a new dentist who felt terrible for me so he numbed me up and yanked the wisdom tooth.

a 3mm or less root tip was left behind. He flushed it and cleaned the socket but left the root tip.
I went to OS who said "lets not wake a sleeping bear"

FAST FORWARD 4 Years

I'm having pain on my lower left jaw line in to my ear. It's at about a 6 on a 1-10 scale. None of my teeth are sensitive or hurt at all, just pain on the jaw line and in to the ear.

Dentist took x-rays and found nothing so sent me to endodontist.
Endodontist took X-rays and CBCT and said he can't find anything, but put me on antibiotic for a week to see if it helped.

It began to feel better after one day but isn't fully gone today (day 5 of antibiotics).

My question: Are CBCT and Xray enough proof that there is no infection? Could it be causing pain even if not infected?

I don't have a copy of the CBCT images, but I've attached the image of the xray

Not sure why they can't figure out what is going on with my jaw.

[Bill_A]

I had a lower molar extracted. A while later a developed severe discomfort in the general area of where the tooth had been, So much discomfort that I thought another tooth would need to be extracted. It turned out that the problem was a root tip that had not been removed when the tooth had been extracted. The dentist informed me that such pieces of extracted tooth can move and start working themselves out of the gum, causing severe discomfort in the process. So its possible that a mobile tooth fragment can cause a lot of discomfort, requiring its remova,l even in the absense of an infection.

[ScalpMassager]

In humans, a blood test would often show when we're battling an infection as our white blood cell count ought to be appreciably high.