Abscessed Tooth Stages

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. Larry Klein. I'm a dentist here in St. Petersburg, Florida. We're going to be talking a little bit about the stages of an abscessed tooth. People get abscessed most of the time due to decay, or a cavity, and it starts small and then basically proceeds. An abscess actually occurs when the decay or the cavity gets down to where the nerve lives. That nerve ends up dying and causes an abscess, which is just a localized infection. The stage one, I kind of picture it almost like a house; if you picture the top part of the house being metal, and then the, that's the enamel of the tooth. The wood, or the attic, is basically the next layer of the tooth, the dentin, and then the final stage is where the nerve is, or it would be this room. So if you can imagine water getting on the roof, basically making a little hole, and then seeping into the attic, kind of filling up the attic with water, and then finally that water making a seepage on the ceiling, and then starting to leak down into the room, that's when it'd be involved with getting the nerve infected. So those are basically the stages of a dental abscess. You've got it where it breaks through the enamel, gets into the next layer of the tooth, works its way down, and then ends up infecting the nerve. So if you have any other questions about dental abscess, feel free to give me a call. I'm Larry Klein, here in St. Petersburg, where a smile is contagious."