Lower right jaw pain & sore throat

[Haileys Mom]

Hi- I'm a 39 year old female who is experiencing lower right jaw pain. The pain began about 4 weeks ago, wherein I had a brief respite of pain for about a week, then the pain returned and worse than before.

I developed a sore throat and right enlarged tonsil. The throat remains sore.

I went to my dentist and after a panoramic xray, she saw nothing wrong. Given the persistence of my pain, I returned to see a different dentist in the practice who did 2 more detailed xrays and saw a slight infection in wisdom tooth. I had the tooth removed the next day. The pain is still there and my throat is still sore.

I questioned whether the white 'spot' in my jaw on the OPG could be a tumor, causing the pain. Because they feel it's condensing osteitis and have seen no change in size, etc. on the OPG, they said "no".

Antibiotics are not helping with sore throat. I am scheduled to see my ENT Dr. on Friday. I'm very concerned about the sore throat pain, jaw pain and now weird nerve sensation in my neck and throat area.

Any ideas?

[Bad_Gut]

A related discussion, Tooth and Sore Throat Pain was started.

[PamHolloway]

A related discussion, husband has mysterious symptoms/sore throat was started.

[mike1105]

i doubt your throt symptoms are related to a deep filling in a molar, especially if nothing to support that ws seen on your films. Dentist indeed do perform root canals on molars routinely, but your best chance of success (root canals are very technisque sensitive and not alwyas succesful)if indeed you need one is to see a root cnala specialist who uses and endodontic microscope. i think youare on the right track by going to an ENT for your throat.

[Haileys Mom]

Well, I certainly didn't expect you to "diagnose" me, but I thought maybe I could get some feedback as far as possibilities. I suppose this matter is much more complicated and maybe someone with more experience could come up with some information that could help me.

-K

[Haileys Mom]

A specific that I forgot to add:

The lower right jaw in area of teeth had high sensitivity to cold liquids, but minimal with hot.

I noticed the pain about a week after part of a silver filling fell out and I couldn't get an appt. for 3 weeks to have the filling replaced (with white composite). However, the dentist saw nothing regarding that tooth, or adjacent teeth. This was the tooth in front of the 1st molar.

The dentist I saw for second opinion did cold testing and the first molar was one that I noticed a lot of sensitivity. (This tooth is a very deep filling that was restored late last year, with white composite. Dentist said there was decay under that silver filling and before she replaced it with the composite, I noticed she kept drilling and drilling and it seemed to take a while until we were ready to put the band around it to fill it in.) The second dentist said that maybe the wisdom tooth extraction would ease pain, but if not, we will have to explore the teeth, that one in particular, since it has very deep restorations.

I was also given a mouth guard for possible bruxism, which I eschewed, and rightly so. It did not help the pain at all.

One other question---If the deeply restored tooth is in fact, causing the pain, do dentists do root canals on molars? I thought I heard my old dentist say that he doesn't do RC therapy on molars. I would hate to lose this tooth.

[Jerome Bogin, D.D.S.]

I wish I could give a cause but not seeing you or the x-ray it is impossible to diagnosis the problem. I think you are following the right path and I am sure the pros will find the solution.